


The Triumph of Galatea (for Acis is transformed)

by theOestofOCs



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: ''there are so many time travel tma fics'' and?? we need as many as we can get, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't Worry About It, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, More On This Relationship As It Develops, Multi, Recovery, Sasha James Lives, Time Travel Fix-It, Trauma, all the hurt happened in canon now we're just giving everyone some much-needed comfort, and so does EVERYONE ELSE DANGIT, and so does everyone else :), anyway whatever it's called. it's in the works, is that not a tag? is that not what this is called? or is it just not popular enough yet, jon is basically all-powerful, jonah magnus gets what's coming to him, just as a side note, polyarchives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26924707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theOestofOCs/pseuds/theOestofOCs
Summary: Statement of Hazel Rutter.Jon couldn’t stop reading.The Fears, however, are a bit more powerful than Jonah gave them credit for. Jon opens the door, but the world can’t hold what’s on the other side.Time falls through, instead. Past becomes present, and the future is undone.Statement begins.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Sasha James/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Comments: 396
Kudos: 564





	1. Through the Door

**Author's Note:**

> as usual, i wrote this while trying to work on a completely different thing, and it ballooned completely out of control. we're currently sitting at 13,000 words with no end in sight, but at least where i'm currently at in writing is a decent sort of ending, so if i get another 10k deep before abruptly losing interest you can rest assured you'll still get a satisfying conclusion (even if it isn't the one i have planned). 
> 
> i do hope i get this one finished, though. i have some very spicy thematic elements i'm excited to bring to fruition.
> 
> let me know what you think!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see endnotes for chapter warnings

Martin was barely forty meters into his walk, not gone long enough to see even a mediocre cow, when he knew something was wrong. It wasn’t anything dramatic, or at least, not anything visibly so. The sky didn’t change colour, the world didn’t unravel around him. He couldn’t have said how, exactly, he knew, but the certainty struck him to his bones.

Something was deeply, terribly wrong, and all he could think was _Jon._

He burst through the door (too late, too damn late) only just in time to take in Jon’s rigid posture: rictus-stiff at his recording table, paper gripped tight enough before him to wrinkle and tear around the edges of the words, his voice the only thing left unshaking. Jon shook, with tears pouring down his face and blood speckling the corners of his mouth like he’d tried to bite off his tongue. In an alien tone at once sneering and exultant which Martin knew immediately was not his, he read the statement.

In slow motion, Martin dove for him. Even as his hands reached for Jon’s, he knew, _knew,_ if he’d only stayed or come back just a second sooner he would have been in time. But now someone else’s voice was ripping perfectly through Jon’s, someone else was using Jon’s eyes to end the world, and even as Martin ripped it from his hands, the last words of the statement were spoken.

“I—OPEN—THE—DOOR!” 

Martin caught Jon in his arms. Jon crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut, like Pygmalion’s statue the moment it changed from stone into flesh, and the cruel voice gave way to Jon’s gasping, sobbing, laughing horror. The world beyond the two of them crumbled, and was unmade.

“Martin,” Jon breathed. Martin knew, with the same certainty that told him _go-back-too-late-Jon-Jon-Jon,_ that whatever had happened had erased everything. It had flung Jon and Martin with him into somewhere that was nowhere, and perhaps made nowhere everywhere. He also knew it didn’t matter. 

“I’m here. Jon, look at me,” Martin ordered, because sure, the world just ended, but that wasn’t his priority right now. Jon was clutching him like a lifeline—or perhaps like Jon was Martin’s lifeline. Martin thought, at that moment, both were true. “Look at me, and don’t let go.”

Jon’s eyes were locked on his. He started to say something, then doubled over, crying out. Martin gritted his teeth and clutched him tighter, feeling himself— _fuzz,_ a bit, round the edges.

“Martin,” Jon said again, and somehow it sounded even more broken.

“I’m here,” Martin repeated, shoving aside the little voice calling it useless, worthless, pointless. “I’m here. Jon, I see you. Look at me.”

Jon tried, and Martin felt himself come back together for a moment. Then Jon spasmed again, barely managing to keep his eyes locked on Martin’s.

“I’ve got you,” Martin told him. “I see you. Jonathan Sims, you are not going anywhere, not without me.”

“Might not—” Jon grunted “—might not have a choice.”

“Well, I’m damn well going to make one anyway,” Martin retorted. At that, Jon actually laughed, a short, sharp bark that sounded like shattered glass, but still genuine.

“Fair—fair enough.”

“I love you, Jon Sims.”

“Martin Blackwood, I love you,” Jon returned.

Martin watched, in the split second before it happened, and remembered that, sometimes, there’s only so much power a person has to choose their fate.

Jon folded into himself as the worst wave yet hit him. He screamed. His eyes closed. His hands went limp, and though Martin fought as hard as he could to hold on, it wasn’t enough. “I’m sorry, Jon,” he whispered, and Martin Blackwood faded away.

“No,” Jon sobbed, but no one was there to hear. He hurtled, tumbling down or sideways or backward or in, as wave after wave of indescribable pain ripped him apart. 

Time _wasn’t,_ anymore, but a meaningless amount of it later, he slowed to a stop. He had a moment to wonder dully if this was the end of it. As soon as the thought crossed whatever was left of his mind, he began to rush uncontrollably back, in whatever directionless direction he’d come from.

For a reason Jon couldn’t have named, he was abruptly terrified. He flung out a hand to catch hold of something, anything, in this not-space where there was nothing left to catch. 

He caught it.

The being once known as Jonathan Sims, once known as the Archivist, once known as the Archive, clutched the handful of Being he’d grasped, and fell back into reality in a dramatically different place from where he’d left it.

The first thing Jon registered was that he had eyelids, and they were closed. He opened them. 

There was a ceiling in front of him. Above him? Presumably so. He blinked at it slowly. There was a waterstain in one corner. It struck him as faintly familiar.

From some distance away to his right, something clattered loudly, followed by a rustling creak. “Jon?” someone said.

He blinked again, and someone was kneeling beside him. Their face swam into view, leaning over him with a distressed expression.

Jon barely registered their cool hand pressing against his forehead, too busy trying to make sense of their face. Because—because that was Tim’s face. Tim was checking him for signs of fever, cursing quietly and turning to call for Martin and Sasha. 

Or, no, not Tim. Tim’s face, and this was it, wasn’t it? This was Jon’s punishment, to spend the rest of however long he was alive being tormented by the monsters he’d called through the door. This was a stranger in Tim’s skin.

Jon wanted to shout and rage and tear it to pieces for daring to wear Tim like a costume. He wanted to be consumed with fury on his assistant’s behalf, and he was, really he was, but he couldn’t move. Didn’t even try. Just went as still as he could, snapping his eyes away and smoothing out his expression into a marble mask. He was a coward, even still; he was a coward, and he was more afraid for his own skin than he was angry for Tim’s.

“Jon?” the thing was saying. God, it sounded just like Tim, even threading fear into its tone. “Jon, can you hear me? Nod if you can understand what I’m saying—or, uh, if you can’t nod right now—I don’t know, blink twice?”

For a moment, Jon entertained the idea of not giving it the satisfaction, though it surely could taste how violently aware he was of his situation. Martin’s voice echoed in his mind, though, and _oh, God, Martin._ “We’ve talked about this, Jon, putting yourself in harm’s way is something we want to _avoid_ when we can, right?”

Jon blinked twice. 

Not-Tim looked absurdly relieved, and then hurried footsteps sounded from out of Jon’s line of sight.

“What happened?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

“I don’t know,” Not-Tim replied. “I heard something crashing in Jon’s office so I knocked and came in, just to check if he was alright, you know? And I just found him like this. He can still hear me, but—we should probably call the hospital. He’s—something’s really wrong.”

“I’ll phone 999,” a third voice murmured, and a pair of footsteps rapidly moved away. Jon sucked in a breath, quiet as he could, but it felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Because that was Martin’s voice. 

That was _Martin._

Rage, pure and feral and impotent, swelled in him, and he did not have the energy left to sort through how much of it was for the Stranger and how much was for himself (Martin had been there, right there in his arms, and Jon still hadn’t tried hard enough. Had let him slip away). 

And still, even now, he was too frightened to move. 

He turned his head away from Not-Tim as much as he dared, and didn’t fight the hot tears that brimmed and spilled over from his eyes.

“Jon?” Not-Tim sounded tentative.

“Right.” Fabric rustled beside his ear, and Jon looked up to see someone with long cornrow braids and a sky-blue skirt kneeling down next to him. “Jon, I’m going to ask you a couple of basic questions, and you can do your best to answer them, okay? Can you do that for me?”

“Sasha, he might not—” Jon stopped listening to Not-Tim, focused instead on him calling her “Sasha.” 

This person looked nothing like Sasha. Sasha had a blonde bob and blue eyes and a mole in her right cheek, and she was short and pale and always used a blush that was just a bit too red for her skin. Sasha wasn’t tall and thin with elbows jutting out and a fiercely serious expression on her face, black hair reaching to her waist and a band of woven bracelets covering half of one forearm.

Or was she?

Jon was suddenly very unsure of a lot of things. Which, he reminded himself, was the whole point of the Stranger.

 ** _“Where am I?”_** he demanded.

“Your office,” said the one who looked like Tim, at the same time as the one who didn’t look like Sasha replied, “The Magnus Institute, in London.”

In the same moment, the Eye also answered. _Home._

But that was impossible. Everything about this was impossible. Then again—if everything that was happening was already impossible, perhaps Jon shouldn’t be ruling things out.

 _When am I?_ he tried, this time just for the Eye.

The answer came immediately. _February 28, 2016._

Well.

That certainly cleared up some things.

It was, Jon decided, quite past time for him to pass out.

Jon woke slowly, to the sound of someone humming and the smell of antiseptic. As soon as he registered the latter, he bolted upright, gasping in a lungful of air.

“Jon! You’re awake!” Martin scrambled to stand from the rickety chair he’d apparently been knitting in next to where Jon was, indeed, lying in a hospital bed. 

“Where—” Jon could barely breathe. He’d been—Tim had been right in front of him—surely he couldn’t have skipped ahead without even a chance to tell him he was _sorry_ — ** _“How long has it been?”_**

“Four hours,” Martin answered immediately, and an instant later Jon knew it really had only been four hours since he’d… arrived. Martin blinked at his own prompt response, but went on after a moment, “You’re—the doctors said you were alright, er, probably, apart from a bit of malnutrition and some severe exhaustion, but they wanted to keep you until you woke up just to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong they didn’t see. Is—I should probably call a nurse—”

Jon sagged back and let him do what he would. When the nurse arrived, he complied with all their questions, testing his short-term memory and general brain functions, from what he could tell. He didn’t bother to know more. 

“It seems like there isn’t anything wrong. Maybe a first-time migraine, or else just a bad case of physical exhaustion—your friends tell me you have a tendency to push yourself too hard,” the nurse shook their head at Jon with a gently scolding expression, “so most likely it just caught up to you unexpectedly. You weren’t properly unconscious when you were admitted, just very, very dedicated to sleeping, so that’s good. Dr. Methven does have you recommended here for a precautionary MRI just to make absolutely sure there isn’t anything funky going on in that head of yours,” they smiled, “so if you want to schedule that right now—”

“No,” Jon interrupted. He swung his legs out of bed, relieved to find that he was still wearing his slacks under the loose hospital gown. “I would like to go home now, please. Martin, do you know where my shirt went?”

Martin pulled it out of his bag with a quiet sigh and passed it over. He looked disapproving, but not at all surprised, Jon noted as he pulled it on. “Are you sure you’re alright to walk, Jon?”

“I’m fine.” 

“Alright,” Martin sighed softly and stuck close by Jon’s side anyway. “Thanks for all your help, Nurse Lee.”

Jon nodded absently and trailed Martin down the sterile halls. Martin guided him around corners Jon knew he could keep track of if he tried, but he was too tired to bother. 

Then they were in a waiting room, and Tim and… Sasha, apparently, leapt up to meet them. 

“What did the doctor say?” Sasha asked immediately.

“Just overworked, looks like,” Martin answered for him.

Tim laughed. “Of course you are. Only you could put yourself in the hospital reading papers, Jon.”

Despite his teasing, Tim looked like he was barely restraining himself from hugging Jon. Sasha was smiling, too, and saying something about not scaring them like that again, and all at once Jon couldn’t take it. His breath hitched and stuck in his chest.

 _Not while we’re still in hospital,_ he told himself. He had to at least get to the car park first. So he tamped down his breathing until it was as deep and even as he could make it, and relaxed the muscles in his face until it was perfectly smooth. Twitching the corners of his lips at the people whose faces he refused to process, he moved towards the reception area with a quick and steady step.

He signed himself out, making the appropriate responses to whatever the receptionist said, and discarded the realization that the others were silent now and might be worrying again. There was nothing to worry about, after all. He was fine. He didn’t deserve to be anything other than fine, so he was _fine._

He was standing in front of Tim’s car before he realized he wasn’t supposed to know where he had parked. He could only muster a vague disgust with himself over the slip. He laid his fingers loosely over the door handle as he waited for the others to catch up.

“Jon?” A gentle hand fell on his shoulder, and he flinched away violently. The woman from earlier was standing behind him, looking at him with—concern? No, fear, stupid of him to think it was anything else. She was afraid of him, and rightly so. 

He should stop doing this. His empty stare was making the others worry, and he knew it would only get harder to thaw himself out the longer he kept it up. He should, at the very least, not actively be encouraging it. 

He kept it up anyway. If he let himself stop pressing down on the glass floor he’d shoved over his mind, he knew he wouldn’t be able to bear what lay underneath.

“Jon, you need to tell me what’s wrong.”

He just stared at her and concentrated on his granite mask. If he let his eyes unfocus he could pretend to himself that there wasn’t a part of him that recognized this woman, just too strong to really believe she was a total stranger. He could pretend it really wasn’t Sasha.

“C’mon, boss-man,” Tim tried. “You can talk to us. What, did you wake up to Martin reading you some poetry?”

Somehow that was the last straw, and as Martin let out a belated splutter Jon felt his face twist without his consent.

“Oh, Jon,” someone said as he tried to take a breath and it shuddered into a sob, and at once there were arms around him. He couldn’t hold it back, then. His mind dissolved into static as he dissolved into tears, and then Tim was hugging him tightly and Sasha was patting his shoulder as Martin lingered, not quite sure of his welcome. That just made Jon sob harder, so he reached out and plucked at Martin’s sleeve until he tentatively wrapped his arms around them, too.

“I really don’t think my poetry is _that_ bad,” Martin muttered eventually, and Jon choked out a shocked laugh.

“Well, how are we supposed to know until you share some with us?” Tim countered. Sasha clicked her tongue at him scoldingly, and he rolled his eyes but backed off with a laugh and an easy apology.

Once it was clear that Jon had himself back under control, Sasha herded them all into Tim’s car. Martin sat beside Jon in the back seat, and Jon couldn’t stop himself from huddling as close to him as the seatbelt would allow, fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt so tightly his knuckles went pale. He could feel the concern radiating from Martin, but thankfully he didn’t say anything. Martin just wrapped one arm around Jon’s shoulders, and let him shake.

Jon wasn’t paying attention to where they were going, but if he’d been thinking about it, he would have assumed they were headed back to the Institute. Instead, Tim pulled up in front of a nondescript tenement and parked. 

“Tim,” Sasha started.

“Sasha,” he mimicked her. “Are you telling me you don’t want to have an impromptu Archives team sleepover night?”

She huffed. “No, obviously not,” which wasn’t what Jon was expecting her to say at all, “but I wanted to use my place. It’s bigger.”

“Ah, but which of us has clothes stocked in every conceivable size in case any guests need pyjamas?”

“Point,” Sasha conceded, and opened her car door to step out.

“What?” Jon managed.

Sasha poked her head back in to look him in the eye. He ducked away as quickly as he could, but she went on, unfazed. “Archives team sleepover night,” she enunciated. “Keep up, Jon.”

Martin seemed almost as lost as Jon felt, when he looked to gauge his reaction. When Martin looked back down at him, though, he got a funny look on his face before nodding sharply. “Right. Sleepover night,” he muttered, half to himself. “Why not?”

“I thought—” Jon grasped for a coherent sentiment to convey. “Don’t we still have work to do?”

All three of his assistants stopped in various stages of exiting the vehicle. Belatedly, it occurred to Jon that he had just been diagnosed with a severe case of overwork. 

“Out,” Tim ordered, and Jon hastily complied.

Upstairs, Tim wasted no time in throwing pyjamas at each of them and ordering them to change. Jon didn’t bother protesting. He was careful, though, to avoid looking at his reflection when he was in the WC. He didn’t want to see someone younger looking back, or—or whatever else might greet him from the other side of the mirror. 

Really, he was still doing his best not to think at all, however difficult such a task might prove. After all, he mused bitterly, if he’d learned how to master that art a bit sooner, perhaps he wouldn’t be in this situation.

He came back to the living room to find an air mattress already half inflated on the floor. Tim’s coffee table had been pushed out of the way to make more room. Sasha was rummaging through the cupboards, and Jon realized with a shock that it was near 7.00 pm. 

“Leave it, Sash, I’m ordering takeaway,” Tim called, and she shrugged and made her way over to where the others were clustered on the sofa and floor. 

Jon hesitated in the entryway until Martin patted the cushion beside him tentatively. He didn’t have it in him to resist the quiet invitation, or to stop himself from curling into Martin’s side and hiding his face in his shoulder. Dimly, he was aware of the others chatting around him. 

After a few minutes a knock came at the door and Tim went to answer it, returning with a truly ridiculous amount of pizza for four people. Jon’s stomach turned at the smell of it. He wasn’t sure if it was ordinary hunger gnawing at him—it had been so long since he’d felt it—or, what was more likely, fear at the thought of what the others would think if they found out what he had become. After his coma, he hadn’t been able to eat any… _normal_ food without getting horrifically sick for hours. He didn’t want to know if it was the same here.

“No thank you,” he said brusquely when Tim offered him a slice. “I’m not hungry.” Before he’d even finished speaking, his stomach let out a loud groan, and he stared down at it in mute surprise. A burst of laughter slipped out of Martin beside him, and Jon shot him a dour look.

Martin ducked his head, but Tim was not to be dissuaded. “Honestly, Jon, have you even eaten anything today?” Jon opened his mouth defensively, though he knew any arguments would probably involve flagrant lying about his past self’s habits, but Tim shushed him before he could say a word. “You are going to eat your greasy cheese bread and stop passing out in the middle of your office, and you are going to like it,” he ordered.

“Hear, hear,” Sasha clapped. Martin was still flushing a bit, but he nodded vigorously. 

Jon resigned himself to his fate, and ate the greasy cheese bread.

When they’d all finished eating, Sasha insisted on playing what she called “sleepover games.” “I vote we start with ‘Never Have I Ever,’ and go from there,” she announced.

“Hang on, I’ll fetch the drinks!” Tim scrambled up and returned quickly, handing out filled glasses to everyone before taking his seat again.

“Tim, you’re the host, why don’t you start,” Martin suggested.

“Alright.” Tim squinted. “Never have I ever… read the original Dracula novel.”

Martin took a sip as Sasha spluttered. “Really, Tim? Aren’t you, like, related to the author or something?”

Tim shrugged. “That’s what my dad always said, anyway. I just feel like, there are plenty of spooky things in my life as it is. Why go looking for more of them, you know?”

“Jon, have you not read Dracula?” Martin bumped against his shoulder lightly, and Jon startled. He’d been staring blankly at Tim, he realized, instead of paying attention to the game.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted.

Martin’s brow furrowed. “Sorry for what?”

Jon clamped down on a laugh that clawed up his throat, not sure he’d like the sound of it. He pulled away from Martin, curling inward. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, and forced himself to look back at Tim. _(I don’t forgive you.)_ “I should—I should have been there for you. We both—both felt pretty… scared, I think, and I put up too many walls to try and protect myself, and I—I was too scared to see that you needed—you deserved better than that.” 

He swallowed, and forced himself to look, really look at Sasha. “You all deserved better than that. You’re so much more capable and—and smart, than I am, and I’m so, _so_ sorry for not seeing that. I should’ve seen it. I should have noticed.”

He closed his eyes, and didn’t look at Martin. “And—and more than anything, I’m sorry, Martin, for being so horrible to you. I—I know it was mostly on the tapes—I didn’t think you listened to them, which was stupid of me, of course—but it’s not an excuse. You’re just—you were always so kind, and gentle, and I was afraid of what would happen if I accepted that, afraid that you were playing some game with me, or that whatever was listening would see you and take you away, because I don’t deserve kindness. I—sorry, that came out wrong, but—what I mean to say is, I should have been kinder to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t.”

For a long moment, there was silence. Jon didn’t dare look up, fixing his eyes on his perfect, unscarred hands lying in his lap. At least now, if he woke up in the morning sometime further in the future, he’d have said it. Too early and too late all at once, but he’d have said it, so that’s something.

He startled as Sasha plopped down at his side. “Well, the important thing is that things will be different going forward,” she said matter-of-factly. Jon stared at her, and she gave him a lopsided smile, raising her arms a bit to silently ask if he wanted a hug.

Jon didn’t really know up from down, at this point (the Eye helpfully treated him to a sudden and extensive understanding of electromagnetics), but he thought a hug would be nice. He leaned forward and let her wrap him up in a warm, wiry, solid embrace.

“Right,” Sasha declared, resting her chin on Jon’s head so he could feel the words as she shaped them. “Never have I ever been to the Eiffel Tower.”

Tim was the only one who took a sip, shaking his head at the lot of them for being “uncultured.” “Never have I ever written love poetry,” he grinned at Martin, and the game continued. Sasha made no move to let go of Jon, and he found he didn’t mind. He fell asleep like that, her chin digging into his scalp and her laughter rumbling warm and clear against his beating heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for: dissociation, food mention, canonical manipulation (The Statement), mention of self-harm (Jon bites his tongue at the beginning), and canon-typical self-loathing (Jon i will get you a healthy self-image if it kills me)
> 
> …
> 
> Me, typing with gritted teeth: and then they all slept over in the same house and used their WORDS and Jon got to be hugged when it WASN’T the apocalypse
> 
> (Teeth are gritted because Jon has so much trauma at this point he doesn’t even know how he’s supposed to be feeling, so I’m over here trying to give him nice things while he’s having four different breakdowns at once. Jon, you will eat the pizza and you will LIKE IT.)
> 
> Bonus deleted scene:
> 
> Martin: uhhh never have I ever had a supernatural encounter  
> Tim:  
> Sasha:  
> Jon:  
> Sasha: I worked in Artefact Storage, so  
> Jon: *end-of-the-world hysterical laughter*  
> Tim: …what he said ^^  
> Martin: —y gosh, I’m so sorry, Jon are you ok, abort abort abort aaaAAAA—


	2. Cease Watching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i am going to project on jon in every conceivable way and no eldritch power can stop me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see endnotes for warnings

Jon opened all of his eyes. 

Here, at least, was one place that had not changed. Fog twined around his ankles, and Jon felt some feeble hope he hadn’t noticed was there wither away as he saw the empty graveyard around him. 

He wondered if the others would appear too, in their time. He knew, whatever happened, he would not be taking another live statement. Would it matter? Or was it already too late?

He looked down with what eyes were not already turned upon her, to witness Naomi Herne. As ever, she scrabbled halfheartedly at the soil of her empty grave. 

“Let me out, please, let me go,” she chanted, the same exhausted monologue he was used to hearing every night, though after a moment Jon realized with a start that there was more energy in her words than he was used to. How long had it been since she gave her statement now? _Less than two weeks,_ he knew. She still had some hope left, however little, that something might change.

“I’m so sorry,” he tried to say, and as Naomi’s head snapped up to look at him he brought a hand to his closed mouth in shock.

“You can talk?” she exclaimed.

Jon stared at his hands, which were moving when he told them to. “It appears so,” he answered, and then winced. His mouth hadn’t moved when he spoke. He looked at himself, something he’d never been able to do before, and took a moment to process what he saw. 

He was definitely _himself_ , even still dressed in Tim’s pyjamas, but he looked more like himself from the future—all his old scars were back, and his hair was long again. Despite the infinitude of eyes that shrouded him in unblinking Beholding, he felt more like himself than he had all day. Also, it was nice to know that at least the eyes weren’t physical. The Watcher would hardly stoop to something so Flesh-like, he supposed, though replacing his voice with a tape recorder slung around his neck was a bit tacky.

He looked back at Naomi, who was scowling at him now. “Would you like a hand out of there?” 

“Er.” She looked taken aback. “Yes, I really would. Thank you.”

He bent down, relishing the familiar twinge of his right calf that had never been the same after Prentiss, and helped her heave herself up and out of the pit. 

She brushed at the clumps of mud on her black suit before giving it up and turning to stare back at Jon.

“Have you always been able to do that?”

Jon hunched a bit under her accusatory look. “I—no,” he stammered, dropping as much of his gaze as he could to look away. Most of the eyes remained stubbornly fixed on his victim. “This is the first time I’ve been able to move. I tried—used to try so hard to do something, anything, to help. But I could only… All I could do was watch. I’m sorry for what you’ve suffered.” He didn’t say, _I didn’t know what would happen._ Maybe if he had known, back then, it would have changed something. That didn’t help the people he’d let himself hurt, let himself _eat,_ when he’d learned the truth. Enough people had suffered from his choices in the future that he knew he didn’t have the right to that excuse now, either way.

Naomi was still looking at him, but her expression had shifted to something inscrutable. “You’re a monster, though.” She blinked when she saw him flinch, though he tried to conceal it. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he answered promptly. The tape that was now his voice played the word too quietly, so he repeated it. She deserved to know the truth. “I certainly am… that.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“Wh—of course not!” Jon took a few quick steps away. The last thing he wanted to do was make her fear worse. She already had to relive one of the most painful moments of her life every time she went to sleep. “Why—well, no, it makes sense that you’d think that, especially because I’ve already done you plenty of harm.” He cringed, thinking back to how he’d responded to her statement. All she’d wanted was someone to believe what she was saying. “Bad enough that I dismissed you the way I did, when I knew, even then, that your statement was true. Let alone all—” he waved a hand at the hollow fog surrounding them “—this nonsense. You deserved better than any of that.”

“Yes,” Naomi said crisply, “I did. But…” Jon shifted under the weight of her stare. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you aren’t a very frightening monster.” He looked at her, incredulous. “No, really! I mean, even when you took my statement—sure, you were pretty gruff, and you didn’t believe me, but at least you didn’t call me a liar or lunatic like a lot of other people I’d gone to did.” 

Jon stiffened. “Who called you that?”

Naomi actually laughed at him. “See, and then there’s that. You’re—well, you’re a bit awkward, but underneath a certain layer of condescension I actually thought you meant well, when I got home and calmed down a bit. Well, until I started dreaming, you know. But I suppose what I’m trying to ask is—well, you seem very human to me? Apart from, you know. All the eyes.”

Jon snorted. “Ah yes, those. You noticed them, did you?” 

“That sort of seems to be the point,” Naomi said dryly.

“Yes, well. Believe it or not, ‘all the eyes’ was what I was trying to avoid when we first spoke. It felt like I was being watched, taking statements, and it was—it was so much worse with the live ones.” Jon swallowed. “You were my first one, the first statement I ever took in person. The only statement. I was—I didn’t want to let on that I could feel it. I thought, if I didn’t believe in any of it, maybe it would see that and start ignoring me, you know, give me up as a lost cause, or something. I hoped—well, I suppose that was my first mistake, wasn’t it? I hoped.”

Naomi gave him a bitter, commiserating smirk. “Seems like a pretty common downfall.”

Jon sighed, lowering himself carefully to sit on the cold ground. His bad leg was starting to hurt. “Among other things.”

After a moment, Naomi sat beside him. “Does that mean you weren’t always… whatever you are?”

“I didn’t used to be a monster, if that’s what you mean,” Jon huffed, massaging his burned hand, which always felt the chill far too strongly. “There are plenty of things that can be undone, but it appears that isn’t one of them.”

“What else can be undone?” 

Jon looked over. Naomi wore a strange expression, and he knew she was thinking of Evan. 

“There are some endings that can’t be changed,” he said carefully. “Death, for instance, is always an end.” Not of existence, perhaps, not for the cursed few, but an end all the same. Best not to complicate matters by mentioning the exceptions. “Most, though—most are less final than we tend to assume. Friendships, for example.”

Naomi smacked him gently on the shoulder, temporarily dispersing a cluster of eyes there. “Are you, the spooky eye creature that haunts my dreams, telling me to get more friends?”

“I fail to see how one precludes the other,” Jon said stiffly.

“Okay, Mr. Spooky Eye Creature,” Naomi teased. “How many friends do you have?”

Jon started to answer, then reconsidered. Did Georgie still count? Daisy and Basira didn’t know his name, and Daisy would probably want to kill him if they met again. Tim didn’t hate him yet. Sasha was still herself. He jolted back to the present when Naomi started giggling madly, and he realized he was making a high-pitched chittering like a tape being rewound at top speed.

“It’s complicated,” he settled on. Naomi was still laughing.

“Alright,” he grumbled, “that’s enough of that. I wonder—” he paused, and Naomi raised an eyebrow, silently urging him on. “Now that I have enough control to move around and so on. I’m going to try something. Just let me…” He trailed off, and focused on closing all his eyes. It took a moment, but he persisted, until the last stubborn watcher slid shut and Naomi’s graveyard dissolved into darkness. 

“Naomi?” he asked. Silence greeted him. He grinned, relaxing just enough that half of his eyes flew back open. He was met with darkness, and for a moment he let himself relax into the sightless void of dreamless sleep, all traces of both fog and company utterly erased. 

It didn’t last, though. Jon felt a swooping sensation that reminded him nauseously of the not-space that had brought him here, and then he tumbled abruptly into someone else’s dream. 

For a moment, he stayed sprawled on the shifting ground. This certainly wasn’t a dream he recognized, and it lacked the clarity he was accustomed to. It felt more like… well, like a normal dream. There were walls around him, he thought, and everything seemed carved out of a light hardwood. He was quietly aware that whatever floor he was on was elevated far above the ground, resting above and below many storeys of the same comfortable wooden supports and solid corners. Briefly he wondered if he’d fallen into the Spiral, but he felt nothing of the disorientation he would have expected. It was just—what it was. A bit impressionist around the edges when he tried to see anything clearly, but not frightening.

“Jon?”

Tim stood behind him. Jon had been so busy trying to make sense of the dream that he hadn’t noticed his approach. He scrambled quickly upright, brushing off the traces of mud that still clung to his sweatpants. 

“Er,” he said. 

“What are you doing here?” Tim shook his head. “No, more importantly, why do you look like that?”

Jon shifted, trying to hide the eyes, which naturally only made themselves brighter in response to his efforts. “You’re dreaming,” he said helplessly.

“Well, I know that,” Tim snorted, then paused. “I know that. Weird. I haven’t had a lucid dream in forever. Anyway, not the point. Why are you all…”

“Monstrous?” Jon offered.

“I mean, that too. I do want to know why your voice is coming from, what is that, a tape recorder? I guess you have been using that thing for a lot of statements lately. No, but what I mean is, what happened to your hand?” Tim stepped closer, scanning his face carefully. “And—what are those, cigarette burns or something?” His brows knit together. “Jon, have you been _tortured?”_

“I—” _of course not,_ Jon meant to say, but then his mind flashed back to, of all things, a month of being lathered with vanilla lotion by an evil clown. He couldn’t believe himself. Everything he’d been through, and it was the moisturizing mannequin he thought of first. 

The laugh he’d repressed earlier burst out before he could stop it, echoing from the recorder without his consent. It was exactly as awful and unhinged as he had feared it would be, and worst of all, it felt like a relief. He lost himself for a minute, trying to stop. 

He didn’t know how long it had been, didn’t know if it mattered, but eventually he got himself under control again. The awful cackling stopped, and gradually his surroundings filtered back into his awareness. 

The wooden platforms had shifted when he wasn’t paying attention, and now he and Tim were somewhere underground, with vaulted ceilings and walls of stone. It was darker, but not more threatening than the last space. Tim hummed a slow, quiet tune, gently combing his fingers through Jon’s hair. Belatedly, Jon realized he was lying practically in his assistant’s lap.

He coughed and sat up. “Sorry.”

Tim just looked at him. “I think you’ve said that word enough times for one evening,” he decided. “Anyway. If you want to tell me about any of it, I’m listening. Otherwise—well, this is my dream, right? I can probably whip up something fun to do.”

Jon hesitated. He didn’t want to say anything where Elias could hear. Jonah most likely knew something had happened to his Archivist, who’d suddenly collapsed and manifested unprecedented power in Beholding, but the last thing Jon wanted was to imply anything about… about time travel. He stifled another hysterical laugh and shoved the thought away.

Then again, Jon realized as he looked for Jonah’s eyes, Elias wasn’t watching right now. Thinking back, Jon couldn’t remember feeling his gaze since the hospital. 

He decided that was a relief, with implications to be considered at a later time. For now, he needed to focus on Tim. He owed him an explanation. 

“Martin and Sasha should hear this, too,” was what came out of the tape recorder. “I don’t—I don’t think I have it in me to tell it more than once.”

Tim nodded easily. “Fair enough.”

“Tomorrow,” Jon went on determinedly. “I can’t say anything when we wake up, and you shouldn’t either, because Elias might be watching. But after we go into work—there’s tunnels, under the Institute, built by Robert Smirke. We’ll be safe from being overheard down there. I’ll tell you everything then.”

“No kidding?” Tim blew out a breath. “Pretty neat. Sounds like a plan. In the meantime, though, why don’t you have a nap, huh?”

Jon stared at him. “We—Tim, we’re already asleep.”

“But somehow that isn’t stopping you from looking half-dead with exhaustion,” Tim pointed out.

Jon scowled. “I can’t even close my eyes.”

“Then just have a lie down. Get some rest for a change.” 

Jon’s next argument died in his throat when Tim pointed over his shoulder, where there most definitely had not been a queen-sized bed piled with blankets a moment before. 

“That’s cheating,” Jon muttered. Tim shrugged, not looking too bothered. Grudgingly, Jon pulled himself upright, wincing as his bad leg nearly gave out after being kept in an awkward position for so long. Tim caught him around the shoulders, even though it wasn’t necessary and he was _fine, Tim, really,_ and hovered beside him as he took all three steps to reach the bed.

“Alright, you lie down, and I’ll work on solving this Rubik’s cube,” Tim ordered, flopping into an armchair that also hadn’t been there a second ago. He picked up a Rubik’s cube from nowhere in particular and started spinning it. 

“Do you not have anything better to do than to sit beside me and watch me not sleep?” 

Tim looked serious. “Solving this cube is a matter of life and death, Jon. If I don’t get it done, we risk losing the seventeenth annual Space Olympics.” 

“You just made that up!”

Tim threw his head back, laughing. “I absolutely did, but I’m the one dreaming, so you know it’s one hundred percent true. Now shut up, or the last resistance fighters will lose the Space Olympics. I’m sure you don’t want that.”

“Oh, heaven forbid.”

To his surprise, it wound up being quite relaxing, lying still as he watched Tim concentrate wholly on solving a Rubik’s cube that couldn’t be solved. He let the rhythmic clacking of Tim twirling the sides around lull him into something like rest. They stayed that way, quiet and comfortable, until Sasha’s alarm woke them up.

Breakfast was a hectic affair. Tim insisted on making them all pancakes and then proceeded to flip every single one by tossing them in the air, which Jon hadn’t really thought was possible before seeing him do it. Sasha kept snatching half-cooked pancakes in midair and eating them before Tim could grab them back, and Martin stood back as he waited for the kettle to boil, laughing at their antics.

Jon couldn’t stop looking at Martin. He was so _happy,_ right now, so much lighter than he used to be. He didn’t have the same confidence Jon knew he was capable of, but the affection Jon was used to seeing in his eyes, directed mainly at him towards the end—that was still there, brighter and freer than ever. 

He was so devastatingly real, too. Jon had grown used to having to strain to see Martin, even when they’d put everything behind them and were hunkered in Daisy’s cabin, and somewhere along the way he’d forgotten what Martin looked like before the Lonely. Every strand of his hair was in focus, every freckle bright on his flushed face. He looked so _alive._

“Earth to Jon?” 

Sasha waved a hand in front of his face, and he reared back, affronted. She pursed her lips, clearly holding back a laugh. “You zoned out for a minute there, everything good?”

Jon glanced back at Martin to see that—oh. The flush in his cheeks wasn’t just from laughing at Sasha and Tim. He’d noticed Jon staring. Oops.

“Just got lost in thought for a moment,” Jon said stiffly. “It won’t happen again.”

Tim snorted, and Sasha rolled her eyes. Martin politely nodded, but Jon knew he was restraining himself from laughing, too. 

“Fine, it will happen again, we all know it, are you happy now?” he grumbled.

“Spectacularly so,” Tim agreed, and deposited a pancake on Jon’s plate. Jon glared at it, and Tim seemed to read his mind, pointing the spatula at him. “Eat!”

Jon scowled, but grabbed some fruit and syrup before taking a bite. At least the pizza from last night hadn’t made an unfortunate reappearance, so breakfast would probably be fine. Hopefully.

Despite himself, he had to admit it was delicious.

When they arrived at the Institute, Jon’s intention was to make a beeline for the Archives, avoiding Elias altogether. Naturally, this was not what happened. Jon could never be so lucky.

“Ah, the four of you made it in after all.” The moment they stepped through the door, Elias descended on them like a particularly courteous vulture. “I take it yesterday’s unfortunate fiasco has been resolved?”

“As long as Jon stops pushing himself so hard, he’ll be fine,” Tim said confidently.

Elias hummed. “Wonderful. In that case, Jon, may I see you in my office?”

Sasha pulled a face when she thought Elias couldn’t see, mouthing “good luck” at him as she and Tim made their way down the stairs. Martin hesitated.

“Is everything alright?” he whispered, pretending to adjust his bag as he eyed Jon worriedly. 

Jon wasn’t sure what his face looked like, but he supposed it was probably bad. He nodded mutely.

“I—if you’re sure.” Martin lingered, though, until Elias rolled his eyes and snapped,

“Really, Martin, I’m sure you must get tired of coddling people all the time. Don’t you have better things to do?”

“Right,” Martin squeaked, “sorry,” and fled after Sasha and Tim.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Jon hissed, forgetting to be frightened for a moment.

Elias just raised a brow at him, an indulgent smirk spreading over his face. “This way, Jon.”

Elias’ office was about as far from the Archives as it could be, on the top floor and tucked away at the end of a long hall. It was an excruciatingly long walk. Elias said nothing until they reached their destination, and Jon certainly wasn’t going to start a conversation, so it was a painfully silent one, as well.

Finally, Elias sank into the chair behind his desk and bid Jon close the door. 

“Sit,” he ordered, gesturing at the hard wooden chair across from him. Jon sat. “Quite the little adventure you had yesterday.” He laced his fingers together, propping up his chin. “I would be interested to know if you have any idea what brought on such a… dramatic transformation.”

Jon eyed him warily. **_“What did you see?”_** The question lashed out, shocking Jon with its ferocity almost as much as it did Elias.

“I saw you finish recording a new statement. I was impressed, you’ve been getting through them so quickly, but I’ve been wondering how long you could sustain your current pace, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when you collapsed.” Elias made a face, and Jon realized with a start that he was trying to keep himself from answering. “Then something truly intriguing happened.” Elias paused, and then he smiled, freely giving in to the pull. “Archivist, your eyes opened.”

And Jon knew exactly what he meant.

“So, as you evidently don’t care much for pleasantries, I will ask again: _what happened to you, Jonathan Sims?”_

For an instant, Jon went electric with terror. Not even a day into his second chance, and Jonah was about to pry every word again from his unconsenting lips.

A moment later, he felt the compulsion take effect, and—he almost laughed. It was so ridiculously weak. He knew, courtesy of the Beholding, that Jonah had poured every ounce of effort he had into forcing Jon’s answer, and he knew with equal certainty that it was utterly useless. Whatever Jon was now, Jonah might as well be throwing pebbles at a mountain and expecting it to move.

But he was, very sincerely, expecting it to move, so Jon gave him his answer. “I was chosen. I don’t think it was because of anything special. Not about me, or anything I did, at least. I just—it was just luck. Isn’t it always? Talk to the wrong person, take the wrong train, read the wrong book, open the wrong goddamn door.” He laughed sharply. “I didn’t mean to become whatever I am, but I don’t think that matters. Not now. I was chosen by the Watcher.” His eyes opened. “Now, I behold.” 

“Ah,” Elias whispered. He cleared his throat. “I see. Well, that does rather… simplify matters. How much do you know, now?”

“Not as much as I would like,” Jon evaded. He stood up, his _all eyes_ blinking out of existence. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my Archives need tending.”

“Of course.”

Face shining, Jonah showed him out.

Jon didn’t remember walking back down to the Archives. He wasn’t sure how much time passed, either, before a trickle of knowing made its way through the static in his ears to inform him that Martin was about to leave, intent on researching the Vittery statement Jon had recorded yesterday. 

Jon dropped the file he’d been holding and spun on his heel. Images, memories, flooded his mind’s eye—Martin jumpy and pale and bringing Jon tea even as the circles under his own eyes grew ever-darker; Martin going to sleep with a corkscrew under his pillow in Daisy’s safehouse, “out of habit” he said, and Jon never pressed; Martin not knocking on doors, and the others learning to do the same even though he didn’t say anything, because they hated seeing the shadow of fear that flickered across his face at the sound. 

Jon would not allow this to happen. Not again.

He intercepted Martin just as the man finished putting on his coat. “The Vittery statement doesn’t require follow-up,” he blurted, trying to catch his breath.

Martin blinked at him. “I was just going to—”

“I know,” Jon interrupted. “It’s—it’s just not a good idea, Martin, alright? Please. Please just leave it alone.”

“Alright,” Martin said softly. “Look, I’m taking off my coat, see? Staying right here.”

Jon watched him hang his coat back up and settle into his chair before he was willing to look away. When he finally tore his eyes off Martin, he realized Sasha was staring at them from her seat across the room, concern in her face. 

“Jon, are you… okay?” Tim asked. At some point he’d gotten up from his desk and sidled over to stand beside Martin’s. 

Jon fixed his eyes on Tim, trying not to think about exactly how far he was from “okay,” and suddenly remembered his promise from last night. 

“Tunnels,” he muttered.

“I—what?”

If he played this right, Jon might be able to convince Elias this was just him noticing a new tidbit Beholding had shared. “There are tunnels under the Institute,” he pronounced, trying to inject the right amount of surprise and confusion into his tone. He wasn’t sure it worked. The others certainly seemed surprised and confused, though, so maybe that would suffice.

“Can you take us to them?” Sasha asked after a moment.

Jon nodded, spinning around again to march into the back aisles of the main Archives. “Here,” he said, stopping in front of the concealed trapdoor and shoving a few filing boxes out of the way. “Just let me…” He prised up the door. “There.”

“What on Earth…?” Martin trailed off, staring into the darkness below. Sasha, on the other hand, was looking at Jon speculatively.

“Tunnels, huh?”

Jon hunched. “So it appears.” He cleared his throat, gesturing forward. “Shall we?”

“What, you want to go inside?” Martin squawked. “D’you have any idea what might be down there? How did you even know about this?” 

Jon pursed his lips. “I just… knew, alright? I don’t know how. And I don’t know what might be in them, which is why I want to explore.” He tried not to wince at the taste of the lie on his tongue, which was somehow not metaphorical. Another new side effect from the Beholding? Lying tasted like lemons, if the concept of lemons had been tortured beyond recognition. “Come on. All statement work is put on hold until we know more about these tunnels.” 

He felt a bit guilty, railroading Martin into something that clearly unsettled him, but his assistants needed to know what had happened. They needed to know what to look out for and come up with a plan to deal with Jonah before it was too late, and they couldn’t do that while Jonah was watching.

“Fair enough,” Sasha said unexpectedly. She pulled out her mobile, activating the torch function. “Come on, relative safety in numbers and all that.” With that, she dropped through the door, singing over her shoulder, “Don’t dilly-dally!”

“You heard her,” Jon said dryly after a pause, and followed suit. 

He shuddered violently when he went from the Archives to the tunnels. It was like plunging into freezing water while simultaneously being robbed of sight: deeply unpleasant and more than a bit hard to breathe. He steadied himself against the wall as Martin and Tim followed him down. Sasha, fortunately, seemed too busy examining the structure of the tunnels to pay much attention to him.

“This is… weird,” Martin decided, voice echoing through the empty passages.

“I’ll second that,” Tim muttered. Sasha was already wandering off down the left tunnel, so the three of them hurried to catch up before speaking again.

“So, uh,” Tim started, voice lilting with uncharacteristic uncertainty. “Jon?”

Jon stopped and sat down, waving vaguely for the others to do the same. He didn’t want to get too far from the trapdoor, not with Leitner still running around moving things. “Right,” he said awkwardly. “I, ah. I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish your Rubik’s cube.”

Jon heard the hiss of Tim’s breath, but didn’t look up. “Okay.” Tim sounded unsteady. “Okay, Jon, what the _fuck?”_

Jon took a deep breath, trying not to get distracted by the feeling of his heart pounding in his chest. Then he looked up to meet the eyes of his assistants: Tim slumped against the wall opposite him, face pale; Martin shifting awkwardly from foot to foot as he tried to decide if he was meant to sit; Sasha staring back at him with eyes that were sharp and utterly unfamiliar. 

He closed his eyes, and began to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: food mention, elias, 2 brief instances of dissociation, brief misinterpretation of scars that could trigger for abuse/self-harm (see below for details). one (1) f*** word.
> 
> detailed warnings: Tim sees Jon in his dreams with all the scars he had in the future, and thinks the worm scars are burns. He asks Jon if he’d been tortured. You can skip from “what is that, a tape recorder?” to “ _of course not,_ Jon meant to say” to avoid it while still getting the gist.
> 
> …
> 
> Naomi: the eye spooky that haunts my dreams grew a personality? he seems nice idk all i know is i’m going to make fun of him at every conceivable opportunity, because he kind of has it coming and also it’s funny
> 
> meanwhile—
> 
> Dream!Tim: hey cool, i love lucid dreams! i can do whatever i want, this is a fun—Jon? what are you doing here? …Jon why are you covered in scars? Jon are you okay—whoops, alright, dream!Jon is hysterical, protective!Tim has been activated. sorry for whatever happened to you bud, my subconscious is really screwed up apparently, why don’t you have a nap  
> Four hours later:  
> Jon: yeah about that dream we shared  
> Tim:  
> Tim: wh  
> Tim: who do I need to kill


	3. Unforgettable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> all my main characters have adhd because i don’t know how to write neurotypicals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see endnotes for chapter warnings

“I, er.” Jon stopped. Now that he’d finally gotten them all somewhere safe, he wasn’t sure where to actually start. There was so _much._ “Well. I suppose I should preface by saying I’m sort of. I’m from the future?”

He blinked at his hands, which were wringing in his lap, and made himself stop. “I—I know how that sounds, but I’m not making it up. I don’t know how to prove it to you. It’s not like I could tell you anything I couldn’t just _know,_ although the tunnels would stop me from doing that, probably, but—” he was speaking faster, hands clenched tightly, mind flashing ahead to everything he needed to say and he couldn’t say it yet because they didn’t know, they didn’t know anything, how could he—

“Jon,” Sasha interrupted. “Stop for a moment, alright? Take a breath.”

He obeyed, looking up hesitantly at where she was crouched a few steps away. She forced a smile. “That’s better. So you’re… from the future? You don’t look any different, so it can’t be too far ahead.”

“N—no, this isn’t—” Jon paused, frustrated. “One moment.” He organized his thoughts. “When I came back, my, ah, my body unravelled along with everything else.” With Martin. He clenched his jaw and forced his thoughts away, not looking at the Martin that was sitting right across from him. “I’m… I’m the same Jon as always, I suppose, just… with memories of a future that hasn’t happened. That _won’t_ happen. I promise you, I won’t let it happen again.”

Tim ran a hand through his hair, grabbing a fistful and tugging slightly. “Jon,” he rasped. “When you were in my dream last night.”

Jon nodded rapidly. “That was—what I used to look like. What I should look like.” He folded his arms and hugged himself, feeling the pressure of a pair of ribs he hadn’t had yesterday morning. A pair of ribs he’d never lost. 

“Oh, my God.” Tim looked sick.

“I’m sorry.” Jon hunched his shoulders. “I didn’t know I could do that. I’ve never been in the dreams of anyone who hasn’t given a statement, before. I don’t even know how it happened, I didn’t mean to—”

“Please shut up.” Tim hung his head, both hands clutching at his hair now.

“Tim!” Martin hissed, moving closer to Jon anxiously. “What the—he’s clearly not—”

“Who did it,” Tim interrupted, looking up at Jon suddenly. 

Jon blinked. “What?”

“Who did that to you?” Tim’s voice was cold, and vicious. “And did they do it to anyone else?”

“I…” Jon trailed off. “I think it would be best if I started at the beginning.”

“Usually is,” Sasha agreed.

“Right.” Jon coughed. “First of all, I suppose, Tim, it’s not what you think.” He gestured at the worm scars on his face, then remembered they weren’t there anymore. “The, ah, circular marks you saw weren’t burn marks, they were from Prentiss.”

“Prentiss…” Jon watched Martin try to place the name. His eyes widened. “Wait, wasn’t she the—”

“Worms, yes.”

“What happened with Prentiss?” Sasha probed gently.

“Erm. It started when Martin went to investigate Carlos Vittery’s statement.” Martin sucked in a breath, and Jon hurried to add, “Not that any of it was Martin’s fault. Really, it was more my fault than anyone’s, I was the one who knocked in the wall—not the point. Martin broke into the basement of Vittery’s apartment building, trying to get some evidence, and stumbled upon Jane Prentiss, who followed him home. She, ah, she kept you trapped in your apartment for some time, but in the end you escaped, and came to warn us.” Jon glanced at Martin, glossing over the details as much as he thought was fair. “Sasha also had an encounter with… a being called Michael, at the time, which told her we could kill the worms with CO2. That was incredibly helpful, we even managed to get Elias to switch the fire suppressant system to carbon dioxide, which turned out to be, heh, literally a lifesaver. Well.” Jon winced. “For—for me, anyway. Me and Tim.

“After Martin got away, Prentiss apparently came here, to the tunnels. There’s a wall in my office that she was eating through, and I, ah. I broke through it trying to kill a spider, right in the middle of the workday. Everyone was still here, except Tim, who was on lunch, and when you came back Sasha ran out to warn you, and then kept going to try and trigger the fire alarm. It was a mess. We had fire extinguishers, thanks to Martin, but we had to escape into the tunnels and we got separated. Tim and I eventually stumbled on the trapdoor I showed you, not knowing where it led, and of course when we opened it Prentiss was right there.”

Jon swallowed. “Elias set off the fire suppression system as soon as he was sure the worms had—had made their mark, so we survived. I’m told you managed to carry off the scars quite well, Tim.” He tried for a smile, but Tim just looked haunted. “Martin was busy finding—” Jon paused. Perhaps the tunnels weren’t the best place to have this discussion, after all. “Er, finding Gertrude’s body.”

“What?” Martin squeaked, voice multiple octaves higher than usual. 

Jon nodded apologetically. “You were quite shaken, obviously. But you survived, at least, and the worms never got you. You were,” he grinned a little, remembering, “far too well-prepared for that.”

“Where was I?” Sasha asked, and Jon’s heart dropped.

“You went upstairs, managed to set off the fire alarm to get everyone out of the building before it was too late.” Jon swallowed. “Elias was the only one who had access to the actual suppression system, so I think you went to see why he wasn’t doing that. He said he didn’t believe it was a threat, which of course you wouldn’t stand for, so—you were with him, on the way to trigger it, when a—a wave of worms, you said, separated you from him. You had to hide in Artefact Storage.” His voice dropped to a whisper on the last sentence, and Sasha went still. “There was—there was a table, with a web pattern that hypnotizes anyone who looks at it. It… might be there already? I’ll check when we get back upstairs. It caught you, when you went in. You… you died.”

“Right.” Sasha nodded to herself a bit. “Web table. Good to know.”

Despite everything, Jon smiled at her. Sasha, he was learning quickly, didn’t get caught up in details about possibility the way he tended to. She accepted things as they were and planned around them. “No wonder Elias didn’t want you to be his Archivist,” he muttered, half to himself. 

“What?” Sasha blinked.

“You are clearly significantly better at acting under stress than I am. You’d probably have figured everything out within a year, and you definitely would have made things far less easy than I did.” Jon shook himself. “Getting ahead of myself again. Where was I?”

“You and I got eaten by worms and survived, Sasha got eaten by an evil table and died,” Tim said shortly.

“And I found Gertrude’s dead body?” Martin added.

“Yes, right.” Jon bit at a fingernail absently. “Right, so that’s when Basira and Daisy started coming around, investigating Gertrude’s death. I suppose they don’t mean anything to you. Ah, they’re police officers” Sasha pulled a face “yes, that’s about right, but they, or Daisy, at least, ended up being… well, something like a friend. That was well after she tried to kill me, though. She—oh. I forgot about the Entities.”

Martin frowned. “That sounds bad.”

“Succinct, and yet so very accurate,” Jon hummed. “Right. So, hm. To put it shortly, there are about fourteen different Entities that like to interfere with the world and cause various sorts of fear, feeding off it. Pretty much every legitimate supernatural occurrence is caused by one of these fears. There’s—” Jon closed his eyes, ticking them off on his fingers “—the Corruption, everything to do with rot and decay; the Vast, the Dark, the Hunt, and the Lonely, which are all rather self-explanatory; the Buried, claustrophobia and being buried alive; the Flesh, which is about meat, factory farms, body horror and so on; the End, fear of death; the Desolation, fear of loss; the Slaughter, fear of war and carnage; the Spiral, insanity or losing one’s sense of self and reality; the Web, spiders and manipulation; the—the Stranger, which, ah, deals with people being replaced, skin that doesn’t fit, ‘uncanny valley’ sort of things,” Jon very firmly didn’t look at Tim or Sasha, “and, and of course the Eye.” He stopped for a moment before realizing they didn’t know about Beholding, either. 

“The Eye is the one we serve,” he added. “Not on purpose, obviously, but intent has never really mattered. Statements, people who have encountered other fears, the Watcher sees it all and consumes it. The worst experiences of peoples’ lives are collected here, and the Eye forces them to relive every instant, this time while being watched.”

“I have…” Sasha trailed off. “Many questions.”

Jon smiled wanly. “Please, by all means, ask away.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“Can we leave?” Martin asked timidly. He flushed as they turned their attention on him, and stammered, “I mean, if we’re serving an evil, what, fear god? Why don’t we just… stop doing that?”

Jon laughed, cutting himself off quickly at the bitter sound of it. “We can’t. I mean, the rest of the Institute can, but when you sign a contract to work in the Archives, you either work in the Archives or wither away. The only way out is to blind yourself, or—” he pulled up short. When had he known there was another way? He didn’t remember, and in the tunnels there was no way the Eye had just given it to him. There it was, though, bright and clear. “Or to kill the Archivist.”

“Kill—but isn’t that you?” Martin looked like he desperately wanted to be wrong. Jon nodded. Tim swore loudly.

“Okay,” Sasha breathed, rising to pace. “This is… a lot. Jon, is there more we need to know?”

Jon rubbed at his human eyes tiredly. “So much.”

“What happened to your hand?” Tim asked suddenly. “The burned one.”

Jon snorted, stretching out the hand in question to stare at the lines of his palm. They looked wrong, now. “I shook hands with a servant of Desolation in exchange for some information. Her skin, very predictably, was made of molten wax.”

“What the fuck,” Martin said.

“Yes, well, I’d just been framed for murder and wasn’t thinking the most clearly,” Jon groused.

Sasha sat down abruptly. “Alright. We’ll go back to the fear gods later. Start over and tell us what you remember, in order, from where I died.”

Jon leaned his head back against the wall. “Right. That makes sense. So, ah. Do you remember what I said about the Stranger?”

…

“And nobody noticed?” Sasha’s voice was small. For the first time since he’d met her, she looked shaken.

“We knew something was wrong,” Jon said miserably. “We just couldn’t place what.”

…

_“Jurgen Leitner?”_

“The very same.” Jon raised his voice a bit. “He’s really just a sorry old man, who’s effectively been hiding in Gertrude’s basement for twenty years. He’s probably blacklisted at every shop in walking distance for coming in to use their lav and leaving without a purchase.”

Martin guffawed, hastily clapping a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound of his laughter. Jon nodded at him. “Precisely.”

…

“Wait, _Elias_ killed her?” When Jon nodded, Sasha blew out a breath. “That’s… hard to take in.”

Jon sighed. “Yes, I thought so too. I stepped out for a moment, idiotic of me, I know, but I didn’t—I wasn’t gone long. When I came back, Jurgen was dead.” He twisted his lips wryly. “Elias killed him to keep him from saying too much. That’s how I got framed for murder.”

“So Elias is definitely evil, then,” Martin clarified. 

Jon laughed, the edge of last night’s hysterics creeping in at the corners. “You have _no idea.”_ He made himself stop, pressed his lips together and breathed. “We… we’ll get to that.”

…

“What does that mean? We can’t kill him at all? Not even with an elaborate plot that technically absolves us from blame according to the logic of death-curses?”

“Not even then, unless we want to risk us also dying in the process. Still not sure about the rest of the Institute, though.”

“That _sucks,”_ Sasha groaned. 

…

“A _month?_ And no one noticed you’d gone missing?”

Jon threw up his hands. “That’s what I said!” Martin was looking absurdly guilty, though, and there was something unfathomable in Tim’s expression, so he added hurriedly, “Well, it’s not that no one noticed, just. I think Elias told them I was off doing research or something.”

Sasha’s mind was evidently elsewhere. “Lotion, though, really?”

Jon shuddered. “I think it was more a way of drawing it out? I don’t even know for sure that she was ever actually planning to skin me. It was certainly an effective way of harvesting fear, though.”

Tim’s lips were white with pressure, but Sasha just nodded thoughtfully and asked, “Any particular scents?”

Jon scrunched his nose. “Vanilla.”

“Well, that’s not even creative,” Sasha scoffed, and Jon barked out a laugh.

…

“So we killed them,” Tim repeated.

“Yeah,” Jon agreed. _I don’t forgive you._ “We did.”

“And I blew myself up.”

Jon nodded, still not looking up from where he was studying the dusty floor in front of him.

“And you also died, but then survived?”

“Pretty much. ‘All but brain-dead,’” Jon quoted. 

“How long did that last?” Martin asked quietly. Jon winced again, trying to make himself even smaller.

“Six months.”

…

“Jon,” Sasha interrupted, when he finished describing Breekon’s dramatic final delivery. “I am literally begging you to tell me you did not open the coffin.”

Jon shifted uncomfortably.

Sasha massaged her temples. “Did you at least, I don’t know, tie yourself to the desk or something? Wrap some chains around your waist and anchor them to the coffin’s exterior?”

That would have been a good idea, actually. “I got an avatar of the Flesh to remove one of my ribs,” Jon offered.

Sasha was not impressed. 

Martin seemed determined to make up for his future self’s absence at the time, and spent a good five minutes shouting at him.

“At least I got Jared’s statement out of the deal,” Jon muttered when he was done. 

“What, he hands you your rib and then decides to tell you his life story as a fun little bonus?”

Jon realized he’d made a terrible mistake. “…Erm. We should probably go with that.”

Martin looked at him flatly. “If you say you gave him a free bone or something in exchange, I really might hit something.” 

Jon edged closer to Sasha, who stared. _“Jon.”_

…

“Wow.” Sasha was grinning as Jon finished telling them about the confrontation in the Panopticon, apparently unfazed by the revelation that their boss was a body-snatching Jonah Magnus. Tim was still trying to wrap his head around that one. “Martin, you are incredibly cool. You’ve been holding out on us!”

Martin looked uncomfortable. “Well, it’s not me, though. Not really.”

“Yes it is,” Jon said absently, caught up in figuring out how much of what happened in the Lonely he should include. Probably best to leave out the romantic bits and chalk all of it up to his Beholding abilities; he didn’t want to make Martin uncomfortable. “You’re Martin, no matter which memories you have. You’ve always been the strongest of us all, you just stopped bothering to hide it.”

Martin flushed. 

…

“…so Martin and I went up to one of Daisy’s old safehouses in Scotland, and just. Stayed there, for a while.”

Jon stopped. 

“Okay,” Sasha said slowly when it became clear he wasn’t going to continue. “So don’t get me wrong, pretty much everything you just described is incredibly screwed up, and I’m glad to, you know, not be erased from existence. But it sounds like… you survived? And might have even gotten something like a happy ending, after everything you went through. Why did you come back? And, maybe more importantly, how?”

_Breathe._ Jon pulled his knees in close to his chest. “Okay. You remember the fourteen entities? And how they all have rituals, but none of them stand a chance of working to actually end the world?” He waited for them to nod, even though he’d just explained it when they went over the Unknowing. “Right. So, so the reason none of them can work is because—because they all focus too much on one entity, to the exclusion of the others, which doesn’t make sense because really, they’re all one thing. The… the Spiral overlaps with the Stranger, and the Vast has a lot in common with the Lonely, and when you get down to it, the distinctions between entities are really very arbitrary.” 

He stopped. His heart was beating quite fast, which he wasn’t used to feeling anymore. “Jonah figured that out. That was about when he killed Gertrude. He had an idea, for a ritual, which he wanted to try out. He thought, if—if he had an Archivist who served the Eye, but became marked by—by all the others—” He took another breath, closing his eyes. 

_Concentrate._ They needed to know. “If he made a, a ‘living chronicle of terror.’ A human Archive. He could use it to call… to call all of the entities into the world. To _open the door._ Once all the marks had been made, all the Archive would have to do was read the words. I didn’t want—but it didn’t matter.”

Someone made an abortive noise, but Jon didn’t stop, couldn’t stop now.

“Jonah hid his ritual between the pages of an ordinary statement, and the Archive, after all, needed to feed.” A shuddering sound came out of his mouth, and Jon wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a sob. “So I started reading. And when I turned the page and found his statement, I couldn’t stop.”

“Oh, Jon,” Martin whispered.

“And then the world ended?” Sasha finished.

Jon shook his head. “I—I don’t think our world could bear the weight of whatever is behind the entities. Martin came in, toward the end of the ritual. He tried to stop me. Didn’t make it in time, but he was with me when—everything disappeared. When it ended, everything… it didn’t even come to an end, not really. It just… wasn’t, anymore. Nothing existed, in a way that somehow made it clear that nothing ever _had_ existed, at least not wherever we’d gone.”

“Martin went along with you?” Sasha’s eyebrows shot up. 

Jon squeezed his eyes shut, trying to compose himself, but that just made the memory clearer in his mind. Martin glaring at him when they were the only two beings left in existence. _Well, I’m damn well going to make a choice anyway._

Martin’s last, defiant _I love you._

Martin’s voice, gently cutting through the haze of unbearable pain as something in Jon was ripped apart and stitched together differently. _I’m sorry._

Martin, being unmade.

“I couldn’t hold on,” Jon whispered. “It—it _hurt,_ so much, and I lost—lost my grip, just for a moment. And then he was gone.” He stared at the floor, eyes unseeing. “Then there was nothing. Then _I_ was nothing. And then I was here.”

Tim broke the silence, eventually. “Elias asked to see you in private this morning.” His voice was dull.

Jon looked up. “Oh, right. Don’t worry about that. I mean, there was no way of convincing him nothing had happened, he knew the moment I arrived just because of the power shift. But I think I managed to convince him I’d just been ‘chosen’ by Beholding itself, and didn’t know why. He doesn’t know about the time travel or the future or—or anything. I don’t think. He tried to compel me, but it didn’t work. I think I’m, ah, more powerful than him now?”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Sasha mused, but Tim was shaking his head.

“No, that’s not…” He stood up restlessly. “We left you alone with him. After he—” Tim broke off, tapping the base of his fist rapidly against the wall. “And then he tried to _compel_ you?”

Oh. Jon recognized the look in his eyes, now.

Tim was _furious._ Lowly, like a prayer, he vowed, “I’m going to kill him.”

“Tim, I don’t know if that’s possible,” Jon said hesitantly. “Let alone safe.”

“Then we find out.” Tim shrugged. He caught a glimpse of Jon’s face, and whatever he saw made his whole demeanor shift. He dropped to the ground where he stood, crossing his legs carefully. 

“Jon, are you… Are you okay?” Martin was looking at him with concern, Jon saw when he managed to tear his eyes warily from Tim, who didn’t seem likely to move in the next few seconds.

“Er. Yes? Why?”

“You kind of look like you’re expecting Tim to bite you,” Sasha supplied.

“Or to kill you.” Tim looked like he was coming to some terrible realization. Jon didn’t know what it was, but he had the feeling he wouldn’t like it. “Jon…” he grimaced. “Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that things weren’t great between us in, y’know, the future.”

“I did stalk you repeatedly and then accuse you of murder,” Jon reminded.

“Right, and I can’t imagine that going over well at the best of times, but I wasn’t, like… I didn’t hurt you. Right?”

“Right.” Jon tasted lemons. 

Tim’s face fell, because Jon was a terrible liar. “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” Jon amended hurriedly. “We were—I’d almost say we were still friends? At the end? You… in a lot of ways, you’d been through far more than I had. You once told me that all the, the worms and hallways and even clowns eventually faded into the background, became a new kind of normal, but. With—with Sasha.” He winced. “You didn’t really know how to trust anything anymore, to believe things were what you remembered them being. Still, you figured that I was far enough along with the Beholding not to get replaced by a stranger. It certainly wasn’t _good,_ what with my paranoia and then getting kidnapped and, ah, gradually turning into a monster, and everything. I left you alone when you needed someone. So, you hated me, which was fair, but there was still more trust there than there was with anyone else. It was like, when the rest of the world was incomprehensible, we at least knew where each other stood. Even if that wound up being at either end of a blade.” He snorted. “Or a bomb, you know. As the case may be.”

“That’s really not funny, Jon,” Martin murmured. 

Jon coughed. “Sorry.”

Tim still looked like he was stuck on something. “Jon, I didn’t… Did I blame you for getting kidnapped?”

Jon paused, thinking back. “I don’t think so? It was kind of a footnote, with everything going on. I don’t think we ever really talked about it.”

“Right,” Tim nodded vacantly. He made a jerky movement, as if he’d been about to stand and thought better of it. “Okay.” Abruptly, he focused on Jon, fixing his dark eyes firmly on his face. “Okay, so it sounds like I can’t really speak for whatever screwed-up future version of me you had these interactions with. We all probably needed a lot of support that none of us were equipped to give each other at the time. So that sucks. But, and I need you to really listen to this, Jon.” He waited until Jon met his gaze and nodded, face serious. “I haven’t been through what that version of me went through. I don’t need anything from you. And I am not going to blame you for trying to survive a massively unfair situation, when you didn’t know what was happening any more than I did. Okay?”

Jon stared mutely. Tim held eye contact with him until everything abruptly went blurry. Martin made a distressed noise as a sob ripped from Jon’s throat, scooting closer to him. 

Jon let himself fold into Martin’s warm, solid mass, and for the first time since he touched the cover of a Leitner, he felt safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: canon-typical PTSD. one (1) f*** word
> 
> credit to @insidepuns on tumblr for [the Leitner rant](https://insidepuns.tumblr.com/post/190877983388/archivistbottles-please-fucking-watch-this-video)  
> …
> 
> Tim: finally i have a name for my murder victim. elias. slash jonah i’ve decided i really don’t care which it is, let’s just figure out how to brutally kill him without also dying and we’ll be set  
> Jon: *reverts to a fun ptsd defense response as soon as he sees the expression of hatred on Tim’s face, not noticing he’s doing anything different because he’s been surrounded by people with extremely bad ptsd for the past four years*  
> Tim: . oh  
> Tim: oh no  
> Tim: oh no future me what did you DO
> 
> also—
> 
> me, originally writing this fic: okay we’re gonna focus on jonmartin with this fic alright? that’s gonna take more than enough brainpower to finagle. so much drama. we’re not gonna do polyarchives that’s too many relationships to work with, i am not smart enough to do that and also a plot  
> the demon that sits in my brain and torments me always: ok but consider. .. polyarchives .  
> me:  
> me: new plan


	4. A Twist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tfw you just poured out your entire life story and come back to find your office equipped with surprise bonus demons. and it isn’t even lunchtime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy heck i woke up the morning after posting chapter 3 to find 30 comments already in my inbox?? you’re all so KIND?? hhhhh so anyway guess i am indeed continuing this fic love y’all <3
> 
> we’ll continue to aim for weekly updates, but i want to avoid posting any chapters that don’t have a point of emotional resolution already prewritten for them. goal is to make sure that even if we don’t make it to the end of the whole fic as i’ve got it plotted out (and i do have high hopes that we will—but just in case) wherever i leave off will still leave you feeling satisfied! however, that does mean that (like with this week’s chapter) updates might come on a bit of a delayed schedule. 
> 
> as always, see endnotes for chapter warnings

They went back up to the Archives as soon as Jon had composed himself, since as Jon pointed out, the longer they spent in the tunnels the more likely it was that Elias would get suspicious. 

When they made their way out of the maze of filing cabinets to the open office space that housed the assistants’ desks, Sasha pulled up short. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she started, a strange note in her voice, “but I don’t think there’s meant to be a door there.”

Jon pushed forward immediately. The wall opposite them should have been an exterior retaining wall, continuous with the one in his office. Sure enough, though, right in the middle of it stood a plain yellow door, as unassuming and innocent as if it had always been there.

This hadn’t happened before. _This hadn’t happened before._ Which meant that whatever happened next, Elias could not be allowed to watch it.

Jon snapped his gaze upward, finding Jonah predictably looking down. He didn’t seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary; he wasn’t devoting his full attention to them, just checking to make sure they’d come out of the tunnels without discovering anything untoward. 

He looked back at the door, which seemed to smile at him with its unassuming wooden frame. Then, with as little fanfare as the door’s arrival, Jon realized how he could stop Elias from seeing. 

“One moment,” he murmured, and opened his eyes.

Martin sucked in a breath and Jon knew that, despite everything, he was scared. He couldn’t fix that just yet, though. First, he had to see things _differently._

Sasha went to her desk and donned her reading glasses, researching everything she could find on weird tunnels. Martin, meanwhile, fetched his coat and went to look into Carlos Vittery, assuring Jon again that he would be very careful of spiders. Tim checked that Jon was alright once more before letting him head to his own office, where he promptly began uploading another false statement to the computer system.

Gently, tenderly, Jon split Elias’ gaze, so sweetly he would never feel a thing, and let him watch all of this. 

Jon would take care of watching the rest. The Watcher didn’t need Jonah to see the truth.

“Okay,” Jon said, closing his eyes. Martin was still clutching Tim’s shoulder, and Tim looked a bit shaken himself. “Sorry about that,” Jon added. “The, ah, the eyes are a new development. I didn’t mean to startle you. Just had to make sure Elias couldn’t see what we were doing.”

Sasha glanced at him, taking her eyes off the door for a moment. “What, you could have done that this whole time? What were the tunnels for, then? I was half-expecting to get ambushed and eaten by Jurgen Leitner down there!”

Jon snorted. “I mean, the man has to get protein where he can, Sasha. Meat is meat, after all.” Oh, they wouldn’t get that reference. “Never mind, sorry. I, er, didn’t know I could affect his gaze like that before now. It will certainly come in handy for avoiding future encounters with rabid tunnel men, though.” He cracked a smile.

“It will, at that,” Sasha agreed. “More importantly at the moment, though—” She gestured at the door. “What do we do so this doesn’t kill us?”

Jon peered at it again. The grain of the wood seemed to have layers, drawing his gaze ever deeper until he seemed to be looking into the heart of the cells of a tree and finding them brilliant with colour; and there was nothing exceptional about the door at all.

“We knock,” Jon said, striding forward.

All three of his assistants exclaimed, but he slipped under Sasha’s restraining arm easily and reached for the door. He knew better than to turn the handle; that was its mouth. No, Jon just laid two light taps like offerings on its solid, shifting wood, and stepped back.

The door creaked open, and the others abruptly went silent.

“Hello, little twisting,” Michael smiled. It stepped forward, like a late dance partner matching Jon’s backward pace to fill the form of a waltz. It was all-consuming, everlasting, and leaning forward, it filled the space Jon inhabited, swallowing every one of his senses. It was not, and Jon was. It was, and Jon was not.

Jon saw it.

The Distortion was fractals and poetry and stars combusting themselves to go on, and hallways and doorways and mirrors that faced each other to reflect endless corridors of nonexistent space. It could not be understood. It could not be known. And still, Jon saw it, all his eyes opening involuntarily to drink in an infinity of impossible things. 

He _loved_ it.

“Hello, Spiral,” he answered softly. 

“There was a contradiction not too long ago, I think.” Michael hummed, and the world shook. “I came to see what all the fuss was about. I do, after all, enjoy a good contradiction.”

“Do you? I hadn’t noticed,” he teased.

The Spiral laughed. Michael laughed with it.

Oh.

“Would you like me to fix that for you?” he asked. “Sorry, it’s just—it looks rather painful.”

The Distortion did not have eyes, but its eyes widened. “Does a nerve not exist only for the sake of being in pain?” its mouth asked.

Jon hummed back. “I think there are many purposes for a nerve, and many kinds of pain.”

“…Please,” Michael hissed. 

Jon obliged.

Because he could see, now, where Michael began and the Distortion ended, and it _was_ painful. It was awful in a way that had nothing to do with the Fears. Michael was twisted far beyond recognition and still, impossibly, alive, undigested and wedged in the folds of the Spiral. Worse still, the Distortion was untwisted—forced to lie flat, pressed and bent like the branches of a tree that had been pruned into a single hideous trunk. Michael’s being was caught where the Distortion should curve into infinite abstractions, Michael’s face tangled and stretched over the Distortion’s timeless arms. 

Carefully, so very carefully, Jon pushed back the coils of the Spiral just a bit further. The Distortion shrieked around him, and he bled his own apologies as he untangled Michael from its Gordian knot. First he took back the bones, which he laid in order, and the blood, and the hair, and the skin; he teased free the nervous laugh and easy kindness, the selfless trust, the sacrifice. Lastly, most painfully, Jon took what was left: Michael’s memories, his hatred, his all-consuming fear mingled with bravery and betrayal. He took back his name, and gently, Jon set Michael free.

Then he let go. 

The Distortion sprang back with the sound of a thousand symphonies playing at once, a sigh of relief and a baring of teeth that were no longer trapped in its mouth. All at once, Jon was back in the Archives, facing an open throat, an empty doorway. 

A hand that did not exist brushed past his hair and promised thanks. Jon blinked his eyes shut, and closed the door.

Immediately, Tim tackled him.

“What was that?” he howled, once they’d crashed to the floor. Somehow Jon was shielded almost entirely under Tim’s body, his own back and head protected by Tim’s arm from hitting the ground. Jon blinked. “You can’t just—you can’t _do_ that, Jon!”

“Is he okay?” Martin asked anxiously. 

“I don’t know, he just got eaten by a door that drives people insane,” Tim spat. “It’s hard to tell if it made a difference, though, seeing as he walked right up to it and _knocked_ so his sanity’s already pretty well in question!”

Jon frowned, opening a few more eyes to see if it would help him figure out what was wrong. It did not. He did, however, get a better view of Sasha striding towards them.

“Look,” she said hurriedly, “let’s just… talk this through, okay? Tim, you can let him up, I think we’re safe for now. Jon, what were you thinking?”

Tim grudgingly stepped back while Jon stared at her. “I saw that the Distortion wanted to talk,” he tried. “So… we talked?”

“Why did you knock on the yellow door, Jon?” Martin clarified, voice taut. “Or was that a different yellow door from the one that repeatedly tried to kill you, and also eats people?”

“No,” Jon said slowly, dusting himself off as he rose to his feet. “Obviously it was the same door. But I wasn’t in any danger. You know that, right?”

Tim’s hands were in his hair again. “No, Jon,” he gritted. “We didn’t know that. How on earth would we know that?”

“Jon, why do you think the Spiral isn’t a threat to you?” Sasha cut in.

Jon blinked disjointedly. “I know it.”

“We-ell, if we’re being fair,” said a new voice, “he isn’t wrong.”

Sasha and Martin whirled around, and Tim shoved Jon behind him roughly. Fortunately, that did nothing to obscure his view, which was far wider than usual. Jon wasn’t sure why he didn’t use more of his eyes all the time.

Michael was speaking. As they stared at him, he struggled to a sitting position from where he’d been lying in a tangle of limbs and torn winter clothes and long, blond hair on the Archive floor. “I have no idea what you did to time, Archivist, but you certainly managed to create a paradox.” He trailed off for a moment, catching his breath. “Nothing the Spiral loves more than that.”

“I thought you said we were safe,” Tim hissed at Sasha. She flung her arms up. 

“I thought it was a dead body! That didn’t seem like a top priority at the time!”

“Er.” Martin ignored them both, edging cautiously forward. “Hello? What’s your name?”

“That’s Michael,” Jon piped up. “He isn’t the Distortion anymore. You’ll want to give him a minute, he’s been in unimaginable agony for a meaningless amount of time.”

Michael didn’t raise his head, but he gave a thumbs up. Still working on breathing properly, then. 

“I just think I should make it known,” Sasha announced, “that I can only process about three more life-shattering bits of information today.”

“It’s not even lunch yet,” Tim muttered.

“That’s alright,” Jon reassured them. “You’ve been taking all this remarkably well so far.”

“Should we, er.” Martin glanced between Jon and Michael. “Should we maybe take this down to the tunnels? Just, uh, guys, I don’t think Jon’s looking too good, and we probably don’t want Elias seeing Michael here if whatever Jon did to his, you know, spooky CCTV thing ends up breaking down.”

“I’m _fine,”_ Jon insisted. “…I do know a way out through the tunnels, though, if you want to take it.”

Sasha raised a finger. “Leitner’s still down there moving things around, though, right? So whatever way you remember probably won’t work for us.”

“No, it will. Leitner isn’t down there right now. We’ll be fine.” 

There was a pause.

“Two more life-shattering bits of information,” Sasha amended.

“Right,” Martin laughed shakily. “Well, let’s, ah, go, then?”

They went.

Tim kept a suspicious eye on Michael, but even he had to admit the man was not much of a threat at the moment. When everyone but Jon and Tim had gone down into the tunnels, Jon hesitated.

“Are you okay with this?” he asked Tim impulsively.

Tim snorted. “Which part?”

“All of it, I suppose.”

“Oh, well, in that case I’m gonna have to say no.” Tim hesitated, and sighed. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty pissed at you for whatever the hell that was with the door, but everything I said before holds true, okay, Jon? We’re still good. Just… _please_ try not to get yourself killed. And maybe talk to us next time you decide to do something colossally stupid, alright?”

“I’ll try.” Jon paused. “It’s hard to know what qualifies as colossally stupid, though. As opposed to just regular stupid.” 

Tim huffed. “How about, anytime you get it into your head to do something, just, like, don’t.”

“What if I want to—”

 _“No,_ Jon.” 

Laughing, Jon swung himself down through the trapdoor.

The last thing he heard was Tim’s shout of alarm, before his eyes winked shut and everything went blank.

Jon woke with a start, what he knew was only seconds later. Horror spiked in his chest as he took in the tunnel ceiling, and he shut his eyes again. “Please tell me I just had a deeply awful but miraculously ordinary dream.”

“I’d love to, but I get the feeling I couldn’t do that honestly,” Martin answered.

“This is insubordination,” Jon grouched. “Sasha. You’re above such things. Please tell me I did not _willingly_ knock on the Spiral’s _bloody door.”_

Sasha sounded thoughtful. “I don’t know if I’d call it ‘bloody.’”

“You’ve betrayed me.” Jon groaned, pressing his knuckles into his two, normal, human eyes. “Why did I _do_ that?”

“Aw, there he is,” Sasha said fondly. “I knew you had common sense hiding somewhere in that skull of yours.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” Jon muttered. “It’s probably a fluke.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

Jon raised his head to see Michael looking at him thoughtfully. 

“Yes?” Jon sat up, rubbing his forehead. “I mean, I remember everything well enough. It wasn’t like I didn’t know what I was doing. I just don’t know why I did any of it, now. It seemed perfectly logical at the time,” he added helplessly.

Michael frowned. “Do you think it was… em, sorry, I don’t know the name. The Fate-Weaver, You Will Come To Her…?”

“No, the Web can’t manipulate me anymore,” Jon said absently, busy staring at Michael now that he’d caught his attention. He looked so _human_. Time didn’t matter in the Distortion, which was small consolation when despite Jon’s best efforts there was still something irrevocably altered about his fundamental nature, but Jon found himself hoping anyway that Michael hadn’t experienced his suffering for long. It was a terrible thing in itself, to be changed against your will. 

With a sudden ferocity, Jon hoped Gertrude’s death had hurt.

“Jon,” Martin interrupted his thoughts in a careful tone. “Not to say I’m doubting you, at all, that’s not what I mean, but—er, you didn’t say anything? Earlier, I mean? About Archivists being immune to the Web.”

“What? No, they aren’t,” Jon blinked. “I think I would’ve mentioned that somewhere around the time I was trying to pin my feeding habits on Annabelle, don’t you?”

Martin’s mouth twisted, but he pushed on. “Then, ah, why wouldn’t the Web be able to…?”

“Oh.” Jon felt a bit dizzy, suddenly. “Oh, that’s… no, that doesn’t—” He resisted the urge to open the other eyes. He was _not_ letting the monster in him win. Not until the others were safe from Elias, at the very least. “I shouldn’t know that. I didn’t know that, before. How did I—we’re in the tunnels, that shouldn’t be possible. Even Elias can’t see in the tunnels, and his seat of power is—is right at the centre, how did—”

Martin was beside him. When did that happen? No, no, never mind, Jon didn’t mean to ask—

“Hey, Jon,” he was saying softly. “Hey, hey. Breathe with me, alright? I know, it’s scary, I know. I’m sorry. Come on, it’ll be a little better if you follow my breathing. Ready? In…” he counted out breaths, and Jon wasn’t having a panic attack, he was _fine,_ he just needed to figure this out. 

But this was Martin. And he was looking at him with wide eyes, still not completely empty of fear, and Jon hated that he’d put that look on his face. So he obeyed. 

In for four. Hold for four. Out for eight. 

In again. Hold. Out.

He did, actually, feel better after a few rounds of breathing.

Well. “Thank you, Martin,” he said stiffly. Martin smiled, and it was the most beautiful mixture of relieved, affectionate and amused Jon could remember seeing. 

(He was struck again by how much brighter Martin seemed. Jon had loved Martin wholly and completely when he was streaked with traces of fog and cold that Jon could never quite stop seeing—when his smiles had become a bit dimmer, the warmth of a hearth on a winter’s day instead of the summer sun. Jon loved Martin still; but he had an ease about him now. Not as free as he should have been, but freer than before. Martin’s happiness went deeper than it did in Jon’s memory. His heart was still fiercely close to the surface. It was a dangerous way to live, so tenderly.

Jon would make sure he could stay that way, if he wanted to. The Lonely wouldn’t touch him again.)

“What I don’t understand,” Sasha began, and Tim cut her off.

“—Can wait until after lunch. Come on, you too, Michael, I’ll pay, but I need some food _stat_ or my brain is going to melt.”

“Hm.” Sasha tilted her head. “Fair enough.”

Tim took a step forward, then stopped. 

“Uh. Jon?” he started sheepishly. “Hate to bring it up, but I, er. Don’t actually have a clue where I’m going. I don’t suppose you still have access to that handy-dandy exit route you mentioned earlier?” He shot off a pair of finger guns with a cheesy, too-bright grin.

Jon sighed, mostly for show, and rolled his eyes. “This way,” he said, hiding his smile as he brushed past. “I remember it.”

Eventually they emerged into Stonebridge. Tim immediately spotted a restaurant named Ace Café and crowed, making a beeline for it. 

“Tim, are you just choosing this restaurant for the puns?” Jon inquired dryly.

Tim’s eyes lit up. “Honestly? I love this place, it’s got the best food, but if I’m _allowed_ to make puns…”

“No, wait, I take it all back!”

“Ah, ah! It’s too late, boss! You really _aced_ those tunnels, after all. I think we’d better celebrate by getting an ace meal for a tiny ace!”

“Well, there’s no need to bring my height into it.”

“Oh, but Jon, there is. There always is.” 

“You’re all insubordinate. I don’t know why I stand for this.”

Sasha leaned in. “Aw, you love us.”

Jon smiled at her softly, her face that was slowly slotting into his memories, slowly becoming familiar again. “Yes,” he admitted. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: brief anxiety attack, altered… consciousness? i guess?, general spiral stuff (sans gaslighting bc nope), and also jon bein spooky and then freaking himself out (you know the drill)
> 
> …
> 
> michael-distortion: heyyyy heard you were messing with timespace can i join :)  
> jon: WOW i’m honoured but dude how bout i fix ur hair real quick, i’ll get the human out of it for ya  
> michael-distortion:  
> michael-distortion: …yes please  
> jon: *un-alchemizes the girlpuppy*  
> distortion: hm. that was weird and bad but thx (i’dkillforyou) uh talk soon  
> michael: wow. i can feel the floor and it doesn’t even smell like metaphors. also i don’t remember how breathing works that’s fine hang on i’ll get it
> 
> ace café is a real place and i have no idea where stonebridge is in relation to the magnus institute but like. between the pun value and the map location? [look at this](https://london.acecafe.com/find-us/). i had no other choice.


	5. Good Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate title for this fic: “Jon Can Eat Food Again And So Help Me, Jonathan, He WILL Do So, If Only Because Of Peer Pressure” (and other forms of projecting)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been brought to my attention that the "girlpuppy" comment was too soon. I apologize. I still think it's funny and the best comparison i could think of but if y'all want to sue for emotional damages you may be entitled to compensation
> 
> see endnotes for chapter warnings

Jon was, frankly, quite impressed with Sasha for waiting until they were almost finished with lunch to ask her questions.

“Okay, but this is going to drive me insane,” she burst out after Tim finished telling a long, convoluted joke involving a bar and a piece of string. “Jon, why on Earth are you immune to the Web? Is that even a thing that can happen? It kind of seems like it would run counter to the Web’s whole _schtick,_ you know?”

Jon nodded, swallowing his last bite of the pork ribs Tim had insisted he order (“because it’s important you maintain the proper number of ribs in your system,” Tim told him with mock severity, and because Jon was having trouble remembering what exactly he found appetizing), and concentrated on an answer to Sasha’s question.

After a full minute, during which time Tim sighed heavily and generally made his disapproval evident, Jon was forced to concede.

“Well, I definitely know the Web can’t influence me,” he grumbled. “That’s about all the Eye is willing to say. Anything more on _how_ or _why_ is met with… I’m not sure how to describe it. The sense that it’s too obvious to bother answering? Like it’s self-evident.”

“So, it’s less that It Knows You is refusing to say anything, and more that it doesn’t think it’s necessary to bother?” Michael suggested. Jon inclined his head.

“Yes, I suppose that’s more or less it.”

Sasha flung herself back in her chair, nearly knocking it over. Tim grabbed and steadied it by the backrest before she could fall, and she patted him distractedly on the shoulder in thanks. “Absolutely ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “It’s like that one lecturer in uni who failed half the class by putting questions in the final that they’d never taught, and then saying ‘oh, if you’d only done the readings you wouldn’t have had any trouble.’ No! It wasn’t in the readings, either, Dr. Moore! You just didn’t do your job properly! What, I ask you,” she slammed her hands lightly against the table, making Michael jump, “is the _point_ of being an evil god of knowledge if you aren’t going to share with the class?”

By this point, Jon was laughing so hard he couldn’t answer her right away. 

“Sasha, let it never be said that you don’t have a way with words,” Martin said solemnly, lips twitching himself as he watched Jon giggle. 

“I should hope not,” Sasha sniffed, and resumed stabbing her sausage with more vigor than was strictly necessary.

Michael poked at his own food as the conversation died down. “I, er.” He bit his lip and forged on. “Sorry, not to change the subject, and I know it’s probably a long shot, but. Do any of you happen to know if, ah, Sarah? Or, or Emma? Are either of them still at the Magnus Institute? Or, you know,” he laughed nervously, but his eyes were wide and earnest. “Alive?”

Jon looked, and immediately wished he hadn’t. 

Sarah, swallowed by the hideous flower of the Lightless Flame at nearly the same moment that Michael first walked into the Spiral’s corridors. Eric’s fate he already knew, entranced by a more human sort of monster and consumed by a love that wasn’t kind enough even to corrupt. Emma falling prey to the Web in Gertrude’s place long before anyone knew, wrapping Michael’s senses in layers of cobweb until at last the deception swallowed him whole. And Gertrude choosing, all that time, not to watch any of it happen. Choosing not to see, until it was no longer useful to her. Then, Jon thought, _oh, then how she saw._ She called the heart of Desolation to burn out the spider she herself had invited in. 

Jon felt the blood drain from his face. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t find the words.

“Ah,” Michael said.

“I’m so sorry, Michael.” Martin looked like he was seconds away from reaching out to offer a hug. 

Michael shook his head hard, tangled blond hair flying out around him. “No, no, don’t be. _Please_ don’t,” he added tightly. “It’s just, it’s been a long… well, however long it’s been, that’s all.”

“About seven years,” Jon supplied.

“A long seven years, then. I-I’ll, ah, I’ll be,” Michael stuttered and laughed again, sounding only slightly more genuine than when he’d been the Spiral. “I’ll be fine,” he finished. “Just, you know, need to find my feet back. Which will be easier, I mean, now that I consistently have feet. So, right, that’s good.”

A thought occurred to Jon, and he interrupted Michael’s rambling. “You can have my old flat.”

Michael stared at him. So did everyone else. Jon’s shoulders tensed. “Well. You can,” he repeated stubbornly. “I haven’t used it regularly since, oh, probably since I first became the Archivist, and I stopped using it at all after the whole ‘wanted for murder’ thing, since the lease expired and frankly I was getting kidnapped too often for rent to be a worthwhile investment. So, you can have it. I’ll be much more comfortable in the Archives.”

Michael, Sasha and Tim all started speaking at once before Sasha made a sharp motion to cut the others off. “Jon,” she went on. “You are not sleeping in the Archives. Of course we’ll help you find somewhere to stay and everything else you need, Michael, but Jon, it just isn’t healthy not to at least have your own place to go back to.”

“The Archives are my own place,” Jon muttered, picking up his fork to push the bones of his meal around on his plate. 

Tim snorted. “Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m concerned about.” Jon blinked at him, and he gestured vaguely at Michael. “Last time you were in the Archives you got, like, possessed by the Eye, not to mention almost eaten by an evil door. Not exactly a fan of leaving you alone in there for fourteen hours every day, y’know?”

Jon wilted. “Fair enough.” He scowled at the table for a minute, trying not to think about the yawning emptiness of the home he had waiting, before something occurred to him. He borrowed the miniature pencil he knew Sasha had in her pocket and carefully scribbled a series of numbers on a clean napkin, presenting them to Michael. “Elias’ banking information,” he explained. Tim choked.

“Er.” Michael stared at it, wrapping a lock of hair nervously around his finger. “I mean, ah, thank—thank you? I think? Sorry, it’s just, I don’t really know why you’re giving me this.”

“You can use it to pay for your lease, and of course to buy clothes and so on,” Jon supplied. Michael still seemed more confused than pleased, though.

“You don’t think he’ll, you know, mind? At all?” 

“I hope he does,” Martin said darkly. Jon looked at him, and he shrugged. Jon couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips then, and Martin flushed surprisingly red. Jon quickly looked back to Michael.

“Honestly, I doubt he’ll notice,” Jon told him. “He’s rather close with the Lukases, or as close as anyone can be, anyway. If he finds himself short on funds he’ll just ask Peter for more.”

Michael eyed Martin doubtfully, but slowly took the napkin from Jon anyways. 

“Trust us,” Tim told him. “This is the absolute least he deserves.”

“If you say so.” Michael frowned. “Did you… I mean, should I be… This information isn’t going to, hah, put me in jail or anything. Right? Not to sound ungrateful! Not at all! It’s just that, well, you mentioned earlier, um. You were wanted for murder?”

Tim burst out laughing. Jon sighed.

“We’ll tell you about it later,” Martin promised. 

Michael did not look reassured.

They returned to the Institute the same way they’d left about an hour later, Sasha scribbling out a summary of Jon’s situation for Michael’s benefit in a dime-store notebook she kept in her coat pocket. Jon thought she might have gone on to add a litany of other information that might be useful to someone who’d been effectively absent for the past seven years, but he studiously avoided looking to check. 

Elias hadn’t noticed anything amiss when they arrived. Jon spared a few eyes to keep it that way, ensuring Michael remained invisible and the rest of them continued to appear diligent, loyal, and altogether uninteresting.

In reality, Sasha spent most of the afternoon aggressively assisting Michael with finding an apartment. As usual, she was inordinately successful, and had coerced a landlord into letting Michael move in that evening. The only condition was that he pay double the rent for that month.

“Well, that’s a non-issue,” Sasha gloated when she hung up the phone. “Thank you, evil overlord!”

“You’re welcome,” Jon called dryly. He was sitting in his office, ostensibly doing work, but the door was open and he was very carefully not looking at the papers on his desk. Just in case.

“I was actually talking about Elias,” Sasha called back, “but it’s cute you think you’re an overlord.”

“Or evil,” Martin chimed in.

“Conspiring, the lot of you,” Jon grumbled.

“Speaking of which.” Tim leaned back so he could make eye contact with Sasha where she was sitting. “Dibs again for tonight.”

“What?” Sasha gasped. “No! Not a chance! It’s my turn this time!”

“I’ve already got the beds made up,” Tim argued. “Plus, I called dibs.”

“Martin.” Sasha turned to direct her next words at him, and Martin straightened. “Tell Tim it’s my turn to host the sleepover tonight.”

“We’re having a sleepover tonight?” 

“Absolutely,” Sasha affirmed. “Open access, so you or Michael don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but Jon, you’re joining, that’s not optional.”

Jon spluttered. “What? Why?”

“You really didn’t seem excited about going back to your place,” Martin pointed out. 

At the same time, Tim said, “You wouldn’t eat or sleep without supervision.”

“You’re both entirely incorrect,” Jon tried, then grimaced. “Ugh, that tastes horrible.”

“What does?” Sasha scooted her chair back to get a better view into his office. “Are you biting into statements or something?”

“No, no, it’s…” Jon waved a hand. “Another new Beholding thing, I think. Every time I try to lie it tastes like electrocuted citrus.”

Sasha stared for a moment, then rolled her eyes. “I suppose I should be impressed that you have the self-awareness to know you were lying, but frankly I’m just disappointed. Anyway, the only say you get here is if you want to weigh in on who hosts.” 

Jon sighed. “Fine. Alright. I really don’t have an opinion, though.”

She shook her head at him and scooted back to her desk, where she and Tim went back and forth for a bit before they finally reached a resolution. Jon didn’t pay too much attention to the details of the argument. He was busy memorizing the faces Sasha made when she was pretending to be outraged, the way her dark eyes crinkled as she flailed her arms around to make a point. 

He already knew what her voice sounded like when she was giving a statement. He knew she pronounced calliope wrong. He knew she said she was skeptical (she’d believed every word he’d said that morning), knew she’d told him she wasn’t brave (had flung herself at Prentiss on a chance of saving Tim), he knew exactly what she sounded like terrified and about to—he didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to know any of it. He wanted to know what she sounded like when she laughed. 

She did laugh, when she won the argument, a triumphant noise that rang out over Tim’s theatrical groan. Jon tucked that sound away beside the rest of his memories, letting it replace the flat, sarcastic chuckle of the thing that wasn’t her. One more thing Sasha was, painting slowly over what she wasn’t. 

“Michael, are you going to come?” Sasha asked, turning away from the game of rock-paper-scissors she’d just won. “There’s more than enough room at my place.”

“Go on, rub it in,” Tim muttered. Sasha ignored him.

“Er, if it’s all the same to you,” Michael said hesitantly, “I think, ah, I’d like to get settled in my new apartment?” 

“Very reasonable,” Sasha agreed. “Martin, what about you?”

“I…” Martin glanced from her to Jon’s open door and back again. “I’m mostly feeling very confused right now, actually,” he confessed, cheeks reddening. “Can I decide a bit later? I mean, I’d need to pick up some supplies from my flat either way, right, so… Maybe I could let you know when I get there if I’ll be staying home or not?”

“Also very reasonable,” Tim chimed in.

“Just shoot me a text so I know how many instant noodle bowls I should make,” Sasha said. 

“No!” Jon didn’t mean to stand up so suddenly, or speak at quite that volume. He winced, and went on in a more appropriate tone, “No, that’s—that’s not a good idea. No texting. Especially not about that.” 

“Wh—okay, but why…?” Martin prompted after a moment of silence.

Jon winced. He’d hoped to avoid rehashing any details of Martin’s ordeal with Jane Prentiss. Reluctantly, he explained, “She took your phone. Er, Prentiss, I mean. When she had you trapped, you’d dropped your phone as you ran, and she used it to—to text us. So we didn’t think you were in trouble.” 

“Oh,” Martin exhaled, voice small. “Right. Yeah, that’s fair enough, then.” He hesitated. “She won’t be there, though, right? I didn’t go to Carlos Vittery’s basement this time, so I shouldn’t have caught her attention.”

“Right,” Jon agreed. “…Probably.”

“Okay!” Tim slapped his hands on his knees, startling Michael, and put on a strained grin. “New plan. I go with Martin to scope out his apartment, and we’ll either drop him off or pick up his stuff if it’s safe. Jon and Sasha can go ahead and we’ll meet up at Sasha’s place, and that way we’ll all be sure to get home safe and sound, yeah?”

“Once again, that last part is non-negotiable,” Sasha interjected. Tim pointed at her, nodding firmly.

Martin cracked a smile, small and wry and tentative, but still open, still gentle. Still real. “Well,” he said, half teasingly and half earnest, “if you insist.” 

Michael left as soon as it was remotely possible for him to get into his new apartment, and Sasha chivvied the rest of them out the door at the stroke of five. Jon kept a single eye on Tim and Martin the whole time they were gone, just… in case. He thought Sasha might have noticed, but she was kind enough not to say anything, at least. She just guided him through the Underground and down the block to her place, one hand resting tentatively on his shoulder as she chattered about the latest news stories and the weather.

Jon blinked, coming back to himself a bit as he walked through the front door. “Sasha, did you ever consider that you’d make an excellent newscaster?”

Sasha laughed out loud. “You sound just like my mom used to. ‘Why not study journalism, or politics,’ she always said. But no, no, I just _had_ to major in anthropological history.” She sighed. “I could’ve been the prime minister, and instead I landed in Artefact Storage. Ah, well. So it goes.”

“There’s still time,” Jon pointed out. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he flushed. She offered another smile, softer this time.

“Not wrong about that, I suppose. Maybe _you_ should run for PM, Jon!”

Jon shuddered. “No, thank you,” he emphasized. “Being in charge of the Archives is more than I can take as it is.”

“I think a country might be easier to run than the Archives, honestly.”

Jon tipped his head, conceding the point.

“Right, I’m going to get changed!” Sasha swung her coat off and hung it in the entryway, making for what Jon assumed was the bathroom. “Let me know if anything changes with the others!” she called over her shoulder, and when Jon made an affirmative noise, she let the door swing shut behind her.

Jon made his way to the living room, taking a seat on a lovely floral-patterned sofa by the window. Tim and Martin had finished up at Martin’s place, collecting Martin’s things and both starting on their way to Jon’s flat, so they were most likely safe from Prentiss for now. Jon practiced watching them without opening his _all eyes,_ and almost nodded off waiting for Sasha to get back. 

“God, you look exhausted.” He jolted upright at Sasha’s voice, and relaxed at the strange-not-strange sight of her. 

“You have a lovely home,” Jon said back, because he’d run out of answers to that observation a long time ago, and because he’d realized on his way to the living room that he’d forgotten to say it earlier.

“Thank you,” Sasha answered distractedly, “my mom left it to me. Look, why don’t I show you to one of the guest rooms while we wait for Tim and Martin to get here? I should be able to scare up a spare toothbrush and so on, if you want to just go straight to bed. Oh, no, wait, Tim would kill me if I let you out of eating dinner. Erm, how about…”

Jon held up a hand, stifling yet another laugh. “It’s fine, Sasha, I’m fine. Is there anything I can do to help make any of the rooms ready, or prepare dinner, or something?”

Sasha shrugged. “Not really. The beds are all made up, and like I said before, mostly what I have in the cupboards is a lot of instant noodles. Want to help me boil water?”

“I’d be glad to,” Jon said. He followed her into the kitchen, and while she filled a large pot with water to boil he poked around to see what else she had to eat. She hadn’t been lying—apart from a truly intimidating amount of ready-made ramen bowls and boxed macaroni, all he managed to scrounge up was a few soup cans and some slightly wilted vegetables. He pulled out a can labelled “cream of chicken” and started dicing one of the three onions Sasha had in her refrigerator.

“What are you doing?”

Sasha’s voice rang loud through the quiet space, and Jon startled, dropping the knife and whipping around. “What does it—I-I’m sorry, is there something else you’d prefer me to do?”

“No! No, no,” Sasha rushed out. She had her hands half up in a pacifying gesture, and Jon realized he’d instinctively hunched inward, half-formed fists curled in front of his chest. He’d picked up the habit from Daisy in the weeks after the Coffin, when she would shrink into herself like something trapped and frightened at every sudden sound or movement. She had only ever half-managed to resist the need to bare her teeth and raise her metaphorical hackles at a threat. Jon had taken to mirroring her; it was hard not to, when every sound really had been either a potential threat or a potential victim. He dropped into a more normal posture, embarrassed. 

Sasha relaxed when he did, and a hint of relief coloured her tone as she went on. “I was just curious. I really only have onions for when I make omelettes and stuff, it just never occurred to me to put them into instant noodles. Is that tasty?”

Jon tipped his head noncommittally. “It’s not bad, at least. I saw you had some canned soup, too, which helps a lot. I used to make this sort of recipe when I was in university all the time, ramen with a canned cream base and whatever vegetables were on hand. You’d be surprised how much flavour a can of soup can provide.”

“Genius,” Sasha declared. “This is going to be the best dinner I’ve had in…” she trailed off, and grimaced. “Well, it doesn’t matter how long, really. A while!” She gave him a bright smile. “You just saved me from the dire fate of eating noodles in spicy salt water forever. Rescued from my own lack of imagination, quite the damsel in distress I make, hmm? It’s a good thing you’re here, Jon.” Her voice dropped a bit on the last sentence, a thread of emotion slipping out between the words. She coughed and turned quickly back to the stove, where the water had just started boiling. “Anyway! Dinner should be delicious.”

Jon looked at her as she stirred in the packages of noodles, watching the too-stiff set of her shoulders and the too-even rise and fall of her breath. When she stepped away from the pot, he reached forward before he could talk himself out of it, and slipped his hand into hers. 

Her breath didn’t catch, and her expression didn’t change. She just looked down at him sharply as her fingers closed gently around his. Jon tilted his head to return her gaze, because she stood head and shoulders taller than him. Sasha was not small and petite and barely able to reach the top shelves in the Archives: she was tall, and poised, and wiry. Sasha’s eyes were not watery blue with pure white sclera. They were dark as night, shining like quicksilver and slightly bloodshot with stress. 

Jon decided that he would end the world twice over if it meant he’d never forget the one and only Sasha James.

“I’m glad too,” he said.

Jon had lost track of how many times he’d been hugged in the last twenty-four hours, but he found he didn’t mind adding one more to the count. If his shoulder grew just a bit damp while Sasha’s gangly limbs were wrapped around him, well. Some secrets he was happy to keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: food cw, past canonical character death (Gertrude-era mentioned characters), canon-typical ptsd, we can’t get through one chapter without someone having a breakdown but to be fair it has been a Day
> 
> jon is just vibin in this chapter. finally things have calmed down just enough for him to assert his own sort of emotional equilibrium, which is roughly equivalent to that of a particularly traumatized housecat. progress!
> 
> we’re getting into the tma Extended Universe now ;) but first everyone really needed a breather. Tim and Martin are decompressing, only slightly monitored by Jon, and Jon and Sasha are bonding because they are both Disaster Archivists in complete opposite directions and i need them to realize this. they are complementary shades of disaster that belong together and gosh i did NOT mean to get this invested in the polychives but here we are. i’m invested. you all will be too. that is a threat


	6. Gambling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which everything continues to be Fine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see endnotes for chapter warnings. Note that themes of addiction & disordered eating play a role in certain parts of this chapter. Please check the warnings and read safely!

Jon hadn’t been exactly eager to go to sleep that night, but he barely made it to nine o’clock before he couldn’t stay awake any longer. He made his excuses and curled up in the guest bedroom Sasha led him to, drifting off almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.

Time may or may not have passed. Jon couldn’t have said one way or another. Immediately, or eventually, or possibly both at once, Naomi’s graveyard began taking shape around him. 

As soon as Jon realized where he was, he worked to leave. It took a moment, but like the night before, he eventually succeeded in shutting the last of the eyes that forced him to watch. The cold mist that had been twining around his ankles vanished as if it had never been, and he resisted the urge to grin at his success. 

Naomi was safe for the night, but Jon concentrated on keeping his eyes shut for as long as he could. He wasn’t sure what it would do, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. Perhaps if he pushed hard enough, he could fight his way into a more human sleep. 

He managed to keep it up for a few moments, but the pressure to open his eyes, to _look_ , quickly started to feel less like holding his breath and more like trying to swallow an ocean. Jon shouted, a wordless, helpless cry of defiant frustration, as his uncountable eyes peeled themselves wide. The will of his god was unmoved by the sound.

Just like the night before, he had only an instant of peace looking into the endless space that knew neither darkness nor light. With an almighty rushing and the feeling of a thousand strings pulling him apart, Jon tumbled out of nowhere and landed once again in someone else’s dream.

The first thing he saw was the Admiral.

He looked around and saw Georgie’s flat around him. It was both larger and smaller than it should be and seemed to echo with extra rooms, but it was nonetheless unmistakeably hers. He spared a moment to hope this was the Admiral’s dream.

“Jon?”

No such luck, of course. He tried closing his eyes again, but he was already exhausted from sparing Naomi, and they barely twitched at his efforts. He felt like screaming again. 

_Get out. You’ve done enough._ Georgie had asked—had never asked—hadn’t, or wouldn’t, or _shouldn’t_ want to be a part of all this. She didn’t need him invading her dreams, of all things. 

“Gosh, I haven’t seen you in forever. What are you doing here? And what’s with the eyes?” She stepped further into the room, staring closely at the watchers that tracked her from the back of Jon’s head. 

Jon sighed, and turned around to face her properly. She sucked in a breath through her nose at the sight of him, and he winced. He’d forgotten about the scars. 

“Guess I’m more worried about you than I thought I was,” Georgie muttered.

“What?”

“Tell me, Jon, have you been taking care of yourself at _all?”_

Jon scowled, and she laughed loudly before he could figure out an answer. “Yeah, I thought as much. I’ve been worrying about you in the back of my mind since we broke up, though I didn’t realize it was this bad, if my dreams are marking you up with a dozen scars and a limp. Sorry about that, I guess.”

It was Jon’s turn to laugh, and he relaxed a little. She didn’t suspect that he was actually haunting her or anything of the sort, which was definitely a plus. He ignored the burst of melancholy at the realization that they weren’t going to have to have any kind of actual conversation. It was for the best.

“That still doesn’t explain the eyes, though!” Georgie persisted.

“Well, you know me,” Jon said dryly. “I’ve always been too inquisitive for my own good.”

“And the tape recorder?”

He shrugged. “I think it has a sort of low-fi charm.” As he finished speaking he remembered when exactly he’d heard Martin describe them like that, and his voice nearly cracked, despite coming from a roll of tape. Tunnels and worms flashed through his mind, and another time Jon had lost him. Quickly, he added, “How have you been? How’s the Admiral?”

Georgie smirked. “I see you still have your priorities in order.” Jon spluttered, and she patted him on the shoulder. “Only teasing. The Admiral’s fine, and so am I. What the Ghost is doing well—it looks like another major show might even be interested in doing a collab episode! Don’t tell anyone, though, nothing’s been confirmed yet.” 

“My lips are sealed,” Jon deadpanned. Georgie flung her head back, curls bouncing with the force of her laughter.

“Oh, I have missed you,” she said, wiping her eyes. “God, Jon, you have no idea. I almost wish I’d never asked you out. I should have known, really, that you’d cut yourself off if it ended badly. I didn’t account for how much I’d miss being friends, though.”

Jon was quiet. “I’m sorry,” he murmured after a pause. 

Georgie shook her head, collapsing onto the couch, which became more solid to accommodate her attention. “Don’t,” she said, suddenly sounding very tired. “It’ll just make me feel worse after I wake up. Don’t say things the real Jon never would. I don’t want it.”

“Right,” Jon managed. That was fair. 

He felt awkward standing when she wasn’t, so he sank down in place, even though it would be awful if he needed to get back up from the floor. Georgie’s dream-Admiral came trotting over, and he let himself bury his face in his fur.

“That was unkind, wasn’t it?” Georgie looked at him thoughtfully. Jon didn’t know how to disagree just then, so he kept his face pressed against the Admiral. The cat meowed and batted at his hair. Georgie sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault you aren’t real, after all.”

Jon snorted. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he muttered.

“Yeah, you would find a way to blame yourself for not existing, wouldn’t you?” Georgie reached over to ruffle his hair. “Don’t worry so much, Jon. You get in your own way.” She looked from him to the Admiral for a moment. Then she clapped her hands and rose to her feet. “Come on, us three should play some Go Fish.”

Jon pulled his head away from the Admiral to stare up at her more effectively. “Us three?”

“Why not?” Georgie returned. She pulled a deck of cards out from between the couch cushions and plunked herself into the chair next to Jon, who was suddenly sitting at a round dining table in the middle of a gambling room. The Admiral was seated on the third chair, blinking wisely at his hand of cards.

“I just think it’s a bad idea to go up against the gambling champion of our age,” Jon amended.

“That’s why we’re playing Go Fish,” Georgie said seriously. “He loses his mind whenever there’s tuna nearby. I thought we’d even the odds a bit.”

Jon shook his head, laughing again, and picked up his cards.

The Admiral won by a landslide.

After their game, Georgie hesitated, searching Jon’s face for something. “If…” she trailed off, and started again. “Jon, are you… what have you been up to these days? You never said.”

Jon eyed her. He should lie. He _wanted_ to lie. But when he tried, nothing came out except static.

“Last time we talked, you were looking into a research job at—what was it, the Magnum Foundation or something? Did that pan out?”

“Stop,” he said.

Georgie blinked, taking a step back. 

“I—sorry,” he stammered. “Just. I—I can’t—you don’t deserve—I’m not dragging you into it. Please don’t ask.” 

“Alright,” she said softly. “Just… Jon, can you at least tell me if you have anyone else?”

Jon’s mind flew to _Martin,_ and then _lost him._ He drew a blank for a moment as he tried not to remember the feeling of Martin’s hand in his, ceasing to be.

“Jon?” Georgie was looking at him with increasing concern, and he returned to the present with a jolt. She was waiting for an answer. 

Unbidden, Sasha’s face came to mind, and the smell of her perfume as she held him close. He remembered the feel of Tim’s arm cushioning his head as he tackled him away from the Spiral’s door. Martin’s future was gone, yes; but Martin was here, alive, and he still had his shining smile. 

Jon felt the seeds of something warm and bright take root in his chest. He looked back at Georgie and offered a rueful sort of grin.

“Actually, I think—” he began, and was cut off by a shrill, shattering noise. Whatever half-formed walls had been around them vanished, and the last thing Jon saw was Georgie’s exasperated face before his two normal eyes flew open, and he beheld the bedroom ceiling.

“—I think I do,” he finished quietly. 

Well. That had certainly been… something.

Jon checked the time. 7.00 am. Georgie, he knew, had set her alarm to go off early so that she could get her editing done on time, and Sasha was the only one of the others awake. 

He sighed, and got up. It wasn’t as though he wanted to risk getting into anyone else’s dreams. He threw on some clothes Tim and Martin had brought from his flat, a bit startled to find an array of old favourite shirts and slacks he’d all but forgotten about. 

All his clothes had been donated while he was in his coma, and he hadn’t put too much care into purchasing a decent replacement wardrobe. He hadn’t realized until now how much he’d missed having clothes that were really _his_. 

Jon snatched a comfortable, work-appropriate dress off the top of the pile, rummaging to find a decent set of white long socks to go with it. He grabbed an assortment of supplies for his morning routine and made for Sasha’s bathroom. 

As he brushed his teeth, back turned to the mirror by the sink, he let his eyes wander. His attention was caught by what looked like half-full bottles of soap poking out of the rubbish bin in the corner. He looked closer. Sure enough, there were two containers in the trash—a small, clear bottle of body wash that was only a quarter of the way finished, and a tin of hand cream with the lid open to reveal a good five or six centimeters of product left in the bottom. They looked like they were from the same set, both styled with pink flourishes and labelled _“WILD_ **MADAGASCAR** _vanilla_ **soap** ” in flowery letters. 

Jon turned, spat out his toothpaste and shrugged to himself. It wasn’t any of his business what Sasha did with her shower soaps.

Without meaning to, as he straightened, he caught his own eye in the mirror. 

He’d been trying very hard to avoid his reflection, but—well, he supposed it had been inevitable, eventually. True to form, once he’d seen it he couldn’t look away.

The last time he’d looked in a mirror had been three days ago, in a time that had never been. Martin had tugged him out of bed, laughing at his grumbling as he threatened to scoop him up, blankets and all—Jon shook himself. 

…Had he really looked so _young?_

His hair was more black than grey, now, and barely reached to his shoulders. The purple smudges under his eyes were barely visible, and he realized with an uncomfortable feeling that the hollows in his cheeks, which he’d never noticed before, were almost entirely gone. Even his skin looked different, quite aside from the lack of scarring; it seemed browner, somehow, making the grey lines of his remembered face seem sickly by comparison. That face, compared to this one, seemed more like a corpse than a person.

Jon supposed it had been.

“Oh, God,” he whispered suddenly, and his legs buckled beneath him. He pressed his back to the bathroom door and let himself slide to the ground.

_How much longer before I look like that again?_

Jon couldn’t do this. He couldn’t go through all of it again. 

He pressed his forehead against his knees and tried to stifle his panicked breathing. He wasn’t going to—he _couldn’t do this again._ Not again. 

The same two years stretched out unforgivingly before his mind’s eye. He remembered in crystalline detail exactly how they would tear him apart. They would unravel him slowly like a worn-out scarf, burn and peel his skin from his bones and rip his bones from his chest, and his mind went blank with the phantom ache of a ruined hand and cramping leg and scraped-out screaming soul. 

And no matter how hard he tried to stop it, he _couldn’t stop it._

Someone knocked quietly on the door at his back. Jon startled and scrambled away, mind a jumble of _doors_ and _Prentiss_ and _not here, is she here, not safe_ and _Mr. Spider wants more,_ and it took a few seconds of frantically scanning the doorjamb for worms before he processed what the voice on the other side was saying.

“Jon?” it was—sounded like— _was_ Martin. “Are you… I mean, I’m guessing it’s you, it might not be, but Tim’s still sleeping and I don’t know, I guess I have a fifty-fifty chance of being right that it’s you and not Sasha. But. Um, either way? I just, I heard a bit of a thump, and you sounded, maybe, a little upset? Do you need help? Or, or anything?”

If he was going to be honest, Jon rather thought he did. 

He made himself crawl forward enough to reach out and unlock the door. He tried to make himself speak, but couldn’t quite manage that much.

“Oh! Um, okay,” Martin mumbled when the lock clicked. “I’ll, um. Should I come in, then? Or was that you locking the door?” He paused, and Jon thumped his forehead against his knees lightly. “Right, er. I’ll just try the door, and if it’s locked, I’ll leave you alone, okay?” 

Jon could picture him nodding firmly to himself, that little line between his eyebrows appearing and disappearing as he oscillated between determined and nervous.

God, he missed Martin.

The doorknob turned and Martin came in. Despite himself, Jon still flinched at the movement, and Martin apologized hurriedly as he pushed the door mostly-closed behind him.

Jon waved a hand at his stammering, opening his mouth to tell him it was alright, he had nothing to apologize for, and closing it again silently. He tried not to let the frustration show. Knowing Martin—knowing how Jon used to _treat_ Martin—he’d think it was directed at him. 

“Jon,” Martin said, and it was quiet and tentative, because Martin didn’t _know_ him anymore. “Do you want a hug?”

Jon let his head drop back down on his knees, suddenly exhausted. It wasn’t fair, surely, to ask this of Martin. He didn’t know Jon anymore. He didn’t remember anything about their relationship, didn’t remember because it had never happened, and now it probably never would because, no matter how well Jon knew the horrors the next few years would bring, he knew himself even better, and there wasn’t a chance in the world he’d manage to convince Martin he was worth loving. Not like this. Not a second time.

(There was a difference between pushing Martin away, and being a monster that remembered loving him. One was destructive, certainly, but the other was just—alarming, was what it was. Unsavory. Freakish. _Wrong_.)

Fabric rustled next to him. Martin settled in, not close enough to be touching, but close enough that Jon could lean into him, if he chose. “I’ll just… I’ll just sit here, then. If that’s okay. If you want me to leave that’s fine too, you can, er. If you want me to go just, tap the floor with your fingers and I’ll leave, okay?”

A laugh, or maybe a sob, broke from Jon’s lips, and he pressed them together and nodded firmly. He put his hands in his lap. 

“Okay,” Martin said softly. “I, hm. Would you like me to talk? Not about anything, you know, nothing stressful, just. I could tell you how the evening went after you went to bed?”

Jon hesitated, because he knew he needed to say no, he was busy trying to think this through—he had to think until he found an answer, had to find a way of stopping everything before it was too late—but the silence was ringing in his ears, and he was so tired of being afraid. 

He nodded again.

“Alright!” Martin sat up a little straighter, face brightening, and launched into an awkward recital of the evening’s events. Tim, apparently, had rummaged through Sasha’s game cupboard until he unearthed a deck of Wizard playing cards, and spent almost half an hour teaching Martin how to play. Apparently there was quite a bit of strategy involved, which Tim had been more than happy to explain as Sasha alternated between groaning and joining in the explanations.

Martin’s face practically glowed as he spoke. Jon could only listen to what he was actually saying with half an ear, because Martin was so happy right now—because Tim was laughing and teaching him how to play cards, and Sasha was _here,_ alive, theirs, full of dry teasing and practicality and nothing like the thing that had-would-had replaced her. 

Because everything was okay, right now, but very soon it wouldn’t be, and _what if Jon couldn’t stop it._

Martin stopped talking, and Jon looked up. The enthusiasm had faded from his face, replaced with a more familiar worry. “Jon, is everything alright? It’s just—” he gestured, and Jon glanced down to realize that he’d grabbed Martin’s sleeve and was twisting it in his fist again.

“Do you… want? to talk about it?” Martin asked quietly.

“I can’t lose them again,” Jon blurted, and then his throat closed back up. He needed to elaborate, clarify, explain what he meant and how they could—how they could _stop it,_ but he couldn’t, he couldn’t speak and he couldn’t breathe and he could feel his heart beating in his ears and _how much longer until he didn’t have a heartbeat—_ he couldn’t _stop it—_

“Oh,” Martin breathed. He sat very still for a moment longer, and then abruptly, he asked, “Jon, it’s fine if you’d rather I didn’t, but I’d very much like to give you a hug right now, so is it alright if I do that?”

Jon knew what he ought to say. He nodded instead.

Martin’s arms wrapped around him. It was very unfair of him, Jon knew, to ask for this kind of comfort from a Martin that didn’t remember what they had been.

Jon melted into him anyway.

“It’ll be alright this time, Jon,” Martin eventually murmured. Jon made a noise in the back of his throat, and Martin squeezed his shoulder gently. “I mean it. You knowing everything now, that’s a huge advantage. Sure, there’ll probably be different challenges that crop up, but we know what to look out for, now. And besides, this time… This time you won’t have to deal with any of it alone.” Martin chuckled a little. “Honestly, now that we have the information you’ve shared, I think we could probably just leave everything to Sasha and she’d have it all taken care of within the week.”

Jon shook his head firmly, because he was starting to see exactly how capable Sasha might be of doing just that, but he refused to put that weight on anyone else’s shoulders. Sasha was only human.

“I’m just kidding, don’t worry,” Martin mumbled. “But you get my point, right? We can help you. We can stop all of it. Together.”

Jon clutched Martin’s shirtsleeve tighter, and tried to make himself believe it.

Eventually, they made their way to the kitchen, Jon scrubbing his face until it wasn’t so obvious that he’d melted down. Sasha had a pile of lightly singed chocolate chip pancakes ready and waiting, much to Tim’s dismay. Tim was insistently trying to wheedle the frying pan from her “just to make a few extras.” 

Jon thought they were delicious, and told her so. 

When they arrived at the Institute, Elias was once again waiting to meet them at the door. “Jon, if I may—” he began, and Tim interrupted, “Sorry, I just need to get Jon’s opinion on something, very important, can’t wait,” and pulled Jon rapidly down the stairs. 

“We’re going to have to come up with a plan, there,” Jon muttered after making sure Elias couldn’t see them properly. “He’s going to get suspicious otherwise.”

“Sure,” Tim conceded, “but not today. Tomorrow, maybe. For now we need to figure out your eating habits.”

“What?” Jon protested as Martin and Sasha filed into the room. “I ate three pancakes this morning! I’m eating fine!”

Tim pinched his nose. “I meant your… other eating habits.”

“Oh,” Jon said.

“You mentioned yesterday that ordinary written statements stopped being enough for you after a while,” Sasha commented. “Should we be trying to source some live statement givers?”

Jon backed away, horror briefly superseding every other thought he might have had. 

“Is that a good idea?” Martin frowned.

“Better than Jon starving,” Sasha argued.

_“No,”_ Jon rasped. “No. Absolutely not.”

Sasha looked up, and whatever she saw in his face made her shift backwards on her heels, extending a hand like she was soothing a frightened animal. “Okay,” she said quickly. “That’s fine, okay, um…”

“No one’s going to make you do anything if you don’t want to, alright, Jon?” Tim cut in, leaning forward in his desk-chair. “We’re just looking at all our options, so we can make sure we cover our bases. We definitely don’t want you to starve.”

“Is it starvation?” Sasha mused, curiosity taking over her expression again. “Because when you were talking yesterday it really wasn’t clear what was going on. Is it like an addiction, where you go into withdrawal but can eventually taper off safely and ‘go clean,’ or do you actively need the statements to survive?”

“I don’t know,” Jon said, voice still hoarse. “I’m going to find out, though.”

“What?” Tim was on his feet again. “Uh, no, that’s not an option, Jon—”

“What do you mean, you’re _going to find out—”_ Martin demanded at the same time.

Sasha was silent, but her eyes cut sharply into him when he met her gaze.

“I’m—I need—” Jon choked out, then gave up. He spun on his heel and flung himself into his office, shutting the door tightly behind him and sliding to the ground against it.

“I’m not hungry,” he said out loud. There was no point wasting time trying to figure out if that was true, because it had to be true, so Jon instead determinedly turned his thoughts to what lie he should tell Elias next.

About fifteen minutes later _(sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds,_ the Eye informed him), there was a knock at his door. 

“Jon?” Sasha’s voice. She sounded tentative. “I’m not going to ask if I can come in, but is it okay if I say some things from out here?”

Jon raised a knuckle to tap listlessly in response.

“Okay, two knocks for yes, one for no,” Sasha said readily.

Jon hesitated, then rapped twice.

He heard her take a breath. “Thank you, Jon,” she said softly. “Er, feel free to knock again if you want me to stop at any time.”

There was the sound of someone leaning up against the other side of the door. “I’m sorry that I upset you,” she started. “I didn’t think that through very well. Tim’s right, we need to make sure you’re eating properly, but you definitely didn’t need all those questions dumped on you at once like that.” She sighed, and there was a rustling sound. When she continued, her voice sounded like it was closer to Jon’s level, like she’d taken a seat herself. “I’m really not good at this interpersonal stuff,” she admitted. “Martin’s the one who told me I was being rude. I don’t really think before I speak, very often. Not that I’d be much better at this stuff if I did, but. It definitely doesn’t help.

“And then Tim said—Jon, I never meant to imply—you know none of this is your fault. Right?” She paused. Jon stayed silent. “It’s not. I mean, you _never_ chose this.” Jon shook his head, but Sasha couldn’t see him, and went on without pausing. “It’s like—like if your boss spiked the coffee every morning with heroin, and then everyone around you got on your case for getting hooked. There’s no possible way this could be _less_ your fault, or less fair. Besides, when I talked about addiction—I forgot about how other people hear this kind of thing, I just—I didn’t think. Quitting something isn’t… it isn’t easy, Jon. Trust me, I would know. And it’s basically impossible under circumstances like the ones you were describing. If your situation is something more similar to an addiction than hunger, I meant that as a good thing. A hopeful one, really. I was just thinking, if we knew which of the two options your needs more or less fall under, we’d be able to make a better plan to help you manage it. I didn’t mean to imply you should have just been able to stop taking statements, back where—back _when_ you were. And I definitely didn’t mean to imply that you should go cold turkey just to see what happens. God, Jon, that would just be cruel.”

Jon shook his head. They still didn’t properly understand, any of them. _Cruel_ wasn’t a word that meant anything anymore. Not when it came to things like him. 

“It’s not that I don’t know which it is,” he confessed abruptly. “It’s just, it’s the worst of both. It’s—it’s—it’s a _need,_ like hunger, with what was happening to Daisy and me both, we knew what it was. It only got worse the longer we went without—without—without—” Sasha hummed understandingly, and Jon dropped the next word. “But it doesn’t, it, it, it—doesn’t—get _better_ when you eat. It just gets, gets, gets worse, and every time you need more of the same just to feel the same amount less hungry—” He cut himself off by biting his knuckle. “I’m _not_ going to feed it,” he whispered.

“Okay, Jon,” Sasha agreed quietly. “That’s fine. We’ll stick to the written statements for now, and take things one step at a time.”

Jon wasn’t exactly planning to read anything—ever again, really, but he didn’t tell her that.

“Okay,” he mumbled.

“Alright.” Sasha paused, and then Jon heard her getting up. “I’m going to go back to my desk, but you’re welcome to come sit with us whenever you like. I think Martin’s stress-brewing tea right now, if you want to get in on that.”

Jon chuckled a bit. Martin’s anxiety-tea was always just the slightest bit oversteeped, and he knew it, so he compensated by adding just a tiny bit too much sugar. It didn’t really balance out, but that was alright. 

“Yeah. Okay,” Jon managed. He wasn’t sure if Sasha could still hear him, but he supposed it didn’t matter. “Okay,” he breathed again.

It was going to be okay.

He would make sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: brief food cw, discussion of addiction & best management thereof, discussion of starvation, fic-typical emotional breakdowns, overly restrictive self-controlling standards that are suspiciously metaphorical for eating disorders. To skip these triggers:
> 
> > Triggering content is kind of freely dispersed throughout the second half of this chapter, so if u want to avoid it, you should be safe to read the first half (up to when Jon sees himself in the mirror, and if you’re cool with reading panic attacks but not eating disorders/addiction, you can continue up to the paragraph beginning “when they arrived at the institute.”) If you skip the second half and want a summary of the main points, read below:
> 
> > Jon has a panic attack upon seeing his reflection, and Martin comforts him. They eat breakfast and go to the Institute, where Tim hustles Jon past Elias before bringing up the question of Jon Eating Statements. Sasha wants to know if it’s a legit need or more like an addiction. Jon is Extremely Not down for this conversation, and crashes in his office. After a few minutes & giving him the option to send her away, Sasha comes over to apologize for upsetting him, and clarifies that addiction is not a moral failing (and also that there was literally nothing Jon could have done differently in his situation). She also advises him not to take the ‘pick urself up by your bootstraps and Man Up’ approach because that’s stupid and cruel, and is clear on the fact that they’re all invested in helping Jon live his best life. Jon, very predictably but also very unfortunately, does not successfully internalize this message at the present time.
> 
> But at least Martin makes tea. I think Martin may be Samwise Gamgee, actually. There’s good in this world, Mr. Sims. Drink your tea and get some therapy.
> 
> …
> 
> Me writing this chapter, apparently: i think this au could use a Smidge More Angst  
> (me re-reading this chapter to edit & scan for content warnings: the extent to which i am projecting on this character crossed the line from “inordinate” into “gratuitous” quite a while ago, but it’s now becoming a frankly alarming insight into my psyche. catch me projecting right down to the stutter. why get therapy when you can write fanfiction ig)
> 
> ANYway, i hope this installment is not stressing any of u out, and promise Jon is going to be 100% okay. Genuinely did not mean for this to be an angsty chapter but these things happen, I suppose, when you toss literal world-ending trauma in the mix. You get some Georgie that’s enough good times for this week ig
> 
> Regardless, though, I promise more fun times are coming up next!! Tune in same time next week to witness the foundation of a support group (or two), and a few more Spiral-based shenanigans! ;)


	7. Reconnection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “found family” is when family finds YOU. by force. often with the assistance of one or more cats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi surprise i am not dead (despite my stupid body’s best efforts like THAT ORGAN ISN’T EVEN NECESSARY can we just get rid of it. please. but nooooo we need a ~specialist~ good god i hate the medical system. but at least i haven’t been needing to pay for this nonsense. perks of living in a semifunctional country, rip american readers. congrats on getting rid of the annoying orange tho? i hope this year brings better things for you)
> 
> what was i saying
> 
> idk sorry
> 
> anyway have 5000 more words of jon being a disaster as support networks are built around him (and also microscopic plot, maybe)
> 
> (see endnotes for chapter warnings)

Over the course of the next few days, things stayed more or less in the same vein. Sasha argued Tim into agreeing that they could use her house for what rapidly became regular “sleepovers,” so Jon wound up going to the grocery store with Martin to pick up some decent meal ingredients. The four of them slept at Sasha’s (although “slept” was perhaps too kind a word for what Jon did, but no one needed to know about that), arrived at work, dodged Elias—who seemed to be allowing Jon to have a say in when and how they interacted, at least for now—and stayed in the Archives. 

Jon still refused to read any statements. He told the others he wasn’t hungry, which was even turning out to be mostly true. Jon wondered if there was something about Jonah’s ritual that made him less dependent on them, or if the magnitude of it was just tiding him over for longer than usual. In the end, he decided to assume it was the former, because he didn’t want to think about how much more desperate he’d be if his appetite returned after consuming something so massively… _filling._

(He hated himself, a bit, for how _satisfied_ a piece of him still was when he thought of that statement. Maybe he could have stopped reading, if part of him hadn’t loved the way it felt.)

He tried not to think about it. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t hungry.

An unexpected side effect of time travel was that Jon had gotten significantly worse at remembering to check his phone. Perhaps “remembering” was the wrong word. It was just that Jon got an uncomfortable, swooping feeling in his stomach every time he looked at that boxy Samsung Galaxy with the pride stickers glued to the back, the phone he’d once been stupidly, secretly attached to, especially as more and more statements accumulated that couldn’t be digitized and it started to feel as if his mobile was mounting the resistance Jon himself couldn’t manage. That phone had been destroyed when Prentiss came to the Institute, the first in a long line of electronic casualties. By the time he’d left his electronics behind to flee with Martin to Scotland, Jon had replaced his phone so many times he’d practically gotten used to forgetting what model he had. Checking his mobile now and seeing something so familiar, something he’d nearly forgotten about… He didn’t like the jolt it gave him. 

As a consequence, Jon didn’t see the text that came through on Thursday morning until it was nearly time to leave work. 

> **hey jon! idk if u still have my number in ur phone - this is georgie. sorry for texting out of the blue, but i think the admiral’s been missing u more than usual since i started dating my new gf. do u want to get together sometime?**

Jon stared at the text for a good two minutes without moving. 

Was this because of the dream the other night? It couldn’t be a coincidence. She certainly hadn’t reached out to him last time around. Jon winced, thinking about how they’d reconnected in his memory. That certainly wasn’t going to happen this time. Jon would live in the tunnels before he dragged Georgie into his mess again. 

Did she suspect something? She hadn’t said anything about it during the dream, though. Jon gnawed at his lip absently. He couldn’t risk her getting caught up in this mess, but… she’d managed to keep herself safe the last time around. He wouldn’t take her statement again. Georgie was good at taking care of herself, he reasoned. 

He knew that wasn’t the point. She’d told him to leave her alone. Whether she remembered it or not didn’t matter. _He_ remembered. He had an obligation to honour her wishes, even if she didn’t remember them, right?

He’d just about made up his mind to tell her he didn’t have time when another text came through from Georgie. It was a photo of the Admiral. 

As it turned out, Georgie was, in fact, free tomorrow.

Jon told himself one meeting couldn’t hurt. 

The next day Jon ducked out early to make sure he arrived on time, and Tim’s face lit up when Jon explained why. He didn’t say anything, but shot Jon a pair of thumbs-ups and a brilliant smile that made Jon catch his breath for a moment, heart clenching for no reason at all. 

“That sounds like a really good idea,” Sasha said thoughtfully. “She gave you—ow!” She looked up at Martin, who was bustling past her desk with a stack of papers. 

“Sorry, didn’t see your foot there,” he said mildly. “Anyway, I agree with Sasha, Jon! That sounds like a great idea, reaching out to an old friend. Have fun!”

“Thank you, Martin. I’ll… do my best,” Jon offered stiffly, and clutched the strap of his bag anxiously as he left. He spent the bus ride to Georgie’s going over what he’d tell her if she asked about his work, or—God forbid—that dream the other night. He hoped she wouldn’t ask about that. He didn’t think it would be fair to lie, but it would be difficult to keep her out of things if she found out he was liable to actually haunt her nightmares.

The journey felt like it went on forever, and yet all too soon he was standing at Georgie’s door, trying to work up the courage to knock. The Hungarian place she liked wouldn’t open for nearly a year, but he knew where to find a good hole-in-the-wall restaurant and stopped by there to pick up some Hungarian takeaway. If she’d already planned something else for her dinner, she could always reheat the takeaway tomorrow, he reasoned. Despite the detour he was still nearly half an hour early. 

He hesitated for nearly five minutes outside, dithering over whether he should knock before the food went cold or leave and come back at a more punctual time, until Georgie finally took pity and made the decision for him.

“Are you going to come in, or did you want to hover on my welcome mat a bit longer?” she asked dryly as she pulled the door open. 

“Do I have a choice?” Jon returned, cracking a nervous grin. 

She laughed. “I mean, I guess, but I think the Admiral will have something to say about it if you don’t come in quick.” Sure enough, the cat had skittered up moments after Jon started speaking, and was currently doing his utmost to slip out the door between Georgie’s legs. He yowled.

“Alright, alright,” Jon chuckled, feeling his shoulders relax a bit. He’d missed Georgie, of course, but he hadn’t quite realized how much he’d been missing the Admiral. “I’m coming.” He stepped awkwardly through the door, handing Georgie the takeaway as he navigated around her without letting the Admiral into the hall. As soon as he was inside, Georgie shut the door, and the Admiral did his utmost to make Jon trip and fall—the better to climb all over him, Jon supposed. 

Georgie said something about going to the kitchen, and Jon nodded distractedly, focused on resisting the urge to sink right to the floor and let the Admiral sit in his lap then and there. He made his way to Georgie’s living room, finally collapsing into his usual seat at the corner of the couch. The Admiral immediately jumped up beside him and put his front paws on Jon’s shoulder, sniffing urgently at his face. 

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” Jon huffed, although he was petting the Admiral almost as fervently as the Admiral was nudging at him. “I’ve missed you, too.”

“Now there’s a sight for sore eyes.” Jon looked up at Georgie, who was smirking at him as she leaned against the wall leading into the living room. There was something like relief in her face, and Jon ducked his head after a moment. He winced, remembering the last time he was here. Sore eyes, indeed.

“You’re one to talk,” he managed after a moment. “I, ah… it’s nice to see you, Georgie.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I didn’t reach out after we broke up. It was… it was cowardly of me. I would like to hear about how your life has been going.” He nodded a bit. That was good, right? He’d been running it through in his head all day, and was fairly sure he’d pulled it off.

“Wow,” Georgie said eventually. Jon glanced up to see that she’d pushed away from the wall, and was scrutinizing him with an indefinable look. “No offense, Jon, but I honestly never thought I’d hear you say that. Any of it, I guess. You’ve changed.” She paused, and Jon tensed a bit, studiously scratching the Admiral’s chin where the cat had curled in his lap. “Relax,” she added, crossing the room to flop down on the other end of the couch. “It’s not a bad thing, to change. Humility’s a good look on you.”

Jon met her eyes, catching the teasing glint in them, and scoffed a bit. “Don’t get used to it. I’ll have you know I’ve only perfected the art of being insufferable since we were together.” 

“What! I thought you’d already managed that?”

Jon dipped his head sagely. “I’m worse now.”

“Incredible,” Georgie marvelled, laughing.

“So…” Jon raised his eyebrows. “A girlfriend?”

Georgie looked embarrassed. “Well, not exactly. Maybe? Like, we’ve been on a few dates, I think, but they might just have been business meetings. I mean, they really didn’t feel like business meetings. And she did call it a date. But we’ve been friends for a while now, so…” She trailed off. “You really don’t have to grin like that.”

Jon shrugged, still grinning. “Insufferable, remember?”

“It’s coming back to me,” she grumbled, but went on to tell him all about Melanie anyway. “She’s the one that might do a collab episode with What The Ghost,” Georgie added after a bit. “She runs Ghost Hunt UK, did you know that?”

“Ah, yes,” Jon rolled his eyes, dutifully playing his part. “The _youtuber.”_

“That’s the one!” Georgie confirmed cheerily. “Do me a favour and keep that little tidbit to yourself for now, though, okay?”

“Yes, I know,” Jon agreed. Georgie nodded, and launched into some more details about her podcast and what the collaboration might end up looking like.

Eventually, despite Jon’s best efforts, the conversation circled back around to him. 

“So? What’s the dating scene like on your end?” Georgie waggled her eyebrows.

Jon looked away. He’d known this was coming, and had prepared his answer well in advance, but it still somehow managed to catch him off guard. “I… er. I was dating someone until recently. It. It didn’t work out.”

“I’m so sorry,” Georgie’s brow furrowed. “They broke up with you? You know, if I asked Melanie, I bet she’d be willing to beat them up. Should I ask Melanie to beat them up?”

Jon coughed out a laugh. “What? No, no, nothing like that. Although I appreciate the offer. No, just… um.” He hadn’t thought she’d ask for more details beyond that. He could just tell her he didn’t want to talk about it, but he’d told himself he didn’t want to outright lie to Georgie, and if he was honest, he really, desperately _did_ want to talk about it. He just didn’t have anyone to talk about it with. “It’s kind of a weird situation.”

Georgie set her box of mostly-finished takeaway on the coffee table and crossed her legs, angling herself towards Jon. “Lay it on me.”

Jon looked out into space for a moment, picking his words. “We… we were friends, too, I suppose, for a while before we started dating. Sort of, at least. I mean, he was isolating himself, and I was failing to be less of a prick than usual, and it was, ah, just a very messy situation for a very long time, but eventually—eventually we worked it out. Not for very long, but we were together. We went away for a while, it, er, it doesn’t really matter why, but we went to this cottage, well, more of a cabin, and really it wasn’t a very appealing place to be, but. He was there. He was there, and we were together, and… it was perfect. For maybe a week, it was really, really good. And then I—he—he went out for a walk, and…”  
Jon swallowed. He knew this was a bad idea, now, but it was too late to take it back. “I made a mistake. It was, I guess you could say—there was. An accident. And now—everything that happened in the last _four years_ —it never, it’s like it never happened. He doesn’t remember anything about it. He doesn’t remember me. So.” Jon stared down into his lap, and the empty bowl of goulash Georgie had insisted he eat as soon as they got settled. “We, ah. Aren’t exactly dating anymore.”

“God, that’s horrible.” Georgie breathed. After a moment, she added, “Is it really just, total amnesia? I didn’t even think that was possible. Is there any chance his memory will come back?”

“No,” Jon said shortly. “The last four years have been totally erased. So really, it’s better for both of us to just—move on.”

“Is that what he told you?” Georgie looked faintly indignant.

“I mean… no? Not exactly?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Jon. He is at least aware that you’d been dating, right?”

Jon shifted, making the Admiral chirp sleepily from his perch on the armrest beside him. 

“Jon.”

“Look, there are a lot of other, more pressing things about that period of time that he needs to process!” Jon hunched. “Besides, there are—extenuating factors. It wouldn’t be fair to expect a relationship from him now.”

Georgie flung her hands in the air. “Fair enough, but if he’s going to break up with you he should at least know he’s doing it!” 

“From his perspective, we were never dating in the first place!” Jon cried, and she went silent. “It never happened! None of it ever happened, and now it never will, and really that’s for the best but that doesn’t mean I don’t—” he cut himself off. “I miss what we had. But I don’t have the right to ask for it back, and I don’t want to risk the friendship we have now by putting that on him.”

Georgie exhaled slowly. “I forgot how difficult you’re always determined to make things for yourself,” she muttered. Jon opened his mouth to protest, but she shook her head. “No, I hear where you’re coming from, and it’s obvious that I don’t have all the facts. You can make your own decisions, Jon. Just…” she hesitated. “Just try to remember that other people’s happiness doesn’t have to come at the expense of your own, okay?”

Jon honestly didn’t know how true that was for him, anymore. Still, he gave her a weak smile. “I’ll do my best,” he promised, and it was the truth.

“Good,” Georgie said firmly. “Second question: do you have any friends that actually enjoy Hungarian food? If so, can you _please_ introduce them to me? Like, I appreciate the gesture and everything, but I know how you feel about Hungarian—don’t front with me, Jonathan—and none of my other friends like it any more than you do.”

Jon sighed, and settled further back into his seat. “Let’s see,” he hummed. “Tim doesn’t mind it, though he prefers his food to be significantly spicier. Sasha’s never had Hungarian, I don’t think,” damn, he’d been doing so well avoiding knowing things about his friends, “and Martin, hm. He might enjoy it, might not. It depends on the dish, mainly.”

“Good to know, good to know.” Georgie paused. “I haven’t heard of these friends before. Have you known them long?”

Jon tipped his head. “Sort of. We’re coworkers, in charge of filing for a local… library, of sorts. I’ve known Martin and Tim for longer, but Sasha’s by far the most efficient. Well, perhaps that’s not fair, Tim’s a good worker, and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who puts in half the effort Martin does. I do appreciate the way Sasha’s mind works, though. She’s far cleverer than me, honestly. I think I was a bit intimidated by that at first, it’s difficult to remember, but regardless, now that I’ve gotten to know her it’s quite honestly breathtaking to listen to her think out loud. She’s… er. Sorry, I’m rambling.”

“No, I’m enjoying it,” Georgie assured him, and she did seem to be telling the truth. “Anyone you’d admit to being smarter than you is someone I want to hear more about.”

Jon eyed her carefully for a moment longer, and when she gestured for him to go on, he obliged. 

He’d forgotten what it felt like, to ramble on about things that weren’t statements without getting cut off midsentence. He built up steam as he went, gesturing progressively more expansively as he detailed the way Tim took everything in stride with a smile and a laugh, and how heartbreakingly open Martin was, and Sasha’s single-minded drive, until he had to be careful that his waving arms didn’t disturb the Admiral beside him. When he finally tapered off, Georgie brewed some tea and told him about the Admiral’s latest foiled bird-hunting attempts. Apparently he’d callously rejected all the feathered toys she’d bought to placate him.

It was nice.

When she invited him to come again the following week, Jon couldn’t find it in himself to decline.

Jon passed the rest of the weekend in a haze of sleep deprivation, and by the following Monday was starting to think his usual approach to managing the nightmares was less sustainable in his newly-mortal body. Unfortunately, more pressing concerns made themselves known almost immediately. 

Sasha had been keeping in touch with Michael, texting with him fairly regularly, from what Jon understood. Partway through the morning, she mentioned that he’d been feeling under the weather.

“What?” Jon demanded, scrambling up from his desk and dashing across the office. He resisted the urge to look in on Michael immediately. The man deserved his privacy, after all.

Sasha blinked at him, seeming half-amused and half-concerned at whatever she saw, and passed over her phone before he asked. 

Jon scrolled up through the messages, ignoring (with difficulty) the series of photos Michael had sent Sasha of his newly-acquired shelter cats, and scanned through the messages in question. The Corruption’s ritual was still due to begin in the next few months. If he’d saved Martin only to put poor Michael at risk…

He started breathing again when it became clear that the texts hadn’t been sent by Prentiss. All the punctuation matched Michael’s texting style, which seemed to be an odd mix of outdated slang and painstakingly accurate grammar, and there was no mention of anything that could be construed as suspicious. 

> _Sorry, I’ll tbl. Not feeling so good. :(_
> 
> _**o no!! nerves abt ur new job, or ?** _
> 
> _No, dts… I hope I didn’t catch the flu or smth. That would be just my luck, I guess!_
> 
> _**noo im so sry michael :(((( u think it cld be food poisoning? r some 24-hr bug? is yoUR NEW FLAT INFESTED WITH MOLD say the word and ill fight ur landlord should i fight ur landlord michael** _
> 
> _Rotfl no, no, nothing like that. I’m just feeling kind of dizzy? Especially when I stand up or think too hard? If that makes sense? Idk how to explain it, just kind of yuck! :P_
> 
> _**oh that suuuucks feel better soon <3** _
> 
> _thx :)_

“Oh, dear,” Jon said.

“What is it?” Sasha demanded, forehead creasing. “Please tell me there’s not something spooky about Michael’s head cold.”

“Um.” Jon avoided her eyes.

Tim leaned forward across his desk, eyes wide. “Jon. Does Michael have a spooky evil head cold?”

“Not… exactly?” Jon hedged. “Also, I believe I’ve mentioned my feelings on professional language being used to describe phenomena pertaining to the Entities, ‘spooky’ just isn’t sufficiently—”

“Jon,” Sasha interrupted, “I would love to have this discussion with you, because I have so many points I could argue in favour of colloquial language and its validity in both personal and professional spheres, but—and I know this is out of character for me—I’m going to ask that we set that aside for now, because I would really like to know if Michael is in imminent danger of being gruesomely, supernaturally murdered.”

“Oh!” Jon’s face heated. “No, right, of course. Michael’s fine. Or, well, not fine, and this certainly isn’t what I’d call good news, but he’s not actively in danger or anything like that.”

“Okay, good, but…?” Sasha prompted.

Jon sighed. “It sounds like he might still be,” he paused, wondering how to phrase it, “under contract.”

There was a moment of silence as his assistants processed that. Finally, Martin spoke up, rubbing his temples tiredly. “How is that even possible? I mean, it’s not like he was attending work in the seven years of being trapped in the Distortion. Was he?”

“No, of course not,” Jon assured him hastily, “but, mm, it’s a bit messy. Remember how I told you time doesn’t really mean much in the Spiral?”

“Er…” Martin thought back. “Not really.”

“No, I remember that,” Tim interjected. “That was after the whole thing with the door, when you were all—” he wiggled his fingers beside his face, presumably to avoid saying “spooky” while still irritating Jon as much as possible. “Right? You, like, _intoned_ about how much Michael had been suffering for a meaningless length of time. I thought that was just more Eye stuff.”

“Oh.” Jon coughed. “My apologies, then. I should have been more clear.” Tim looked a bit exasperated at that, so Jon hurried to explain. “Within the Distortion’s corridors, time gets about as twisted up as everything else. Even if the conditions of the contract still applied to him when he was more or less metaphysically unravelled, Michael wouldn’t have been affected by the passage of time unless he wanted to be.”

“But now that he’s not in the Distortion, and properly himself again…” Sasha concluded, realization dawning in her eyes. Jon nodded grimly.

“Apparently the compulsion from his time in the Archives is still binding.”

Sasha heaved a gusty sigh. “I’ll call and let him know, I guess.” 

“If it helps, I don’t think he actually needs to do any work,” Jon offered. “Basira used to spend the day reading novels. I’m fairly certain Melanie was actively destroying Institute property at one point, just as a pastime.”

“Honestly, if I were him, I’d probably be willing to come in just for that,” Martin mumbled.

“I can give you some false statements to burn, if you like,” Jon said, and Martin jumped. Guiltily, Jon realized he probably hadn’t been meant to hear him from where he stood across the room. After a moment, though, Martin grinned tentatively.

“You know, I might just take you up on that sometime,” he laughed.

Jon nodded solemnly. “Right. I’ll assemble a pile of documents that may be used for arson, if you so desire.”

“I—wh—” Martin blinked rapidly, but Jon had already retreated back into his office and was diligently pretending to work. Without looking up, he watched as Martin glanced between him and Tim helplessly. Sasha had already stepped out to call Michael, but Tim was cackling in his seat. Jon let himself smirk a little when he was sure they wouldn’t see. 

He did gather a stack of worthless statements, though. Just in case.

The next day, Jon intercepted Michael en route to the Institute and escorted him through the tunnels. Admittedly, it had been seven years, and if Michael were to walk through the doors the only person remotely likely to recognize him was Elias, but, of course, Elias was the only person they absolutely could not risk seeing Michael. Jon could run interference against his supernatural powers of perception, but he didn’t think there was much he could do if it came to a physical encounter.

As they walked, navigating through passages that Jon knew once again were entirely absent of Leitner—he was beginning to feel a bit concerned about where the man might be—Jon awkwardly tried to make conversation.

“So, I heard you adopted some cats?”

Michael brightened a bit, straightening his shoulders and switching from biting his fingernail to tugging a lock of his hair. Jon was fairly sure that was an improvement.

“I, yes, I did! Two cats, I mean, I was only going to get one, but the—the ARC staff said they’d already bonded, and I thought, you know, people say cats aren’t social creatures but that isn’t true at all, so I wanted, er, or, or thought it would be more responsible, to make sure they wouldn’t get, you know, lonely? While I was at work.” Michael stuttered to a halt, sneaking a glance at Jon. 

Jon did his best to look unthreatening. It didn’t seem to work, as Michael flushed vividly red and shrank back into himself.

“Sorry,” he mumbled hurriedly, “I, ah, don’t mean to go on. Do—do you have any? Cats, I mean?”

“No, I don’t,” Jon answered, more stiffly than he’d meant to. He wasn’t sure when he’d next get the opportunity to have a cat of his own. He and Martin had talked a bit about getting one, but they hadn’t had time, and Jon still wasn’t terribly attached to the idea of returning to his own apartment anytime soon. Even if he’d had time, it just didn’t seem like it would be feasible. Still, none of that was remotely Michael’s fault. Jon tried to refocus. “What are their names?”

“Oh!” Michael blinked. “Er, they came with names, of course, but they really didn’t seem very attached, so I’ve been calling them Mackenzie and Halligan. I mean, they aren’t terribly attached to those names, either, but they don’t mind them, so. I like them. The names, a-and the cats, of course. Mackenzie’s all black and Halligan’s an orange tabby, and they’re both rescues, so I’m sure they’ll come with their own baggage but so far they’ve been really, really sweet. Though Halligan doesn’t ever seem to sleep,” Michael laughed, sounding less nervous and more wry, “and I’m starting to think Mackenzie knows how to open doors. Haven’t caught him at it yet, though.”

“I could, er,” Jon hesitated, but it was too late to take it back now, “keep an _eye_ out for that, if you want?” He smiled a bit to show he was joking.

That startled another laugh out of Michael, who blinked at him a few times before hazarding an answer. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Just yet, anyway. I’ll… keep you updated?”

Jon nodded, then stepped back to let Michael go up into the Archives before him.

It occurred to him that he’d forgotten to ask how much Michael knew. “Sasha explained all the details of your situation to you, right?”

As Jon kicked the trapdoor shut behind him, Michael shifted, looking uncomfortable again. “Ah, I can’t—can’t quit, right? Like, I need to keep coming into the Archives pretty regularly, or I’ll get sick.” He hesitated, looking sidelong at Jon like he was hoping to be wrong. “She said the only way out was to… to gouge out my eyes?” 

“Well.” Jon frowned a bit. “Yes, there’s that. There is another way to get released from contract, though, did she not mention? If you kill the Archivist, the assistants go free.”

“We won’t be taking that route, though, will we?” 

Jon winced at the sound of Sasha’s voice. She was standing at the end of the aisle Jon and Michael had climbed up into, looking terribly severe. 

“No!” Michael said quickly. He looked pale. “God, no. I mean, obviously not. No.”

“Good,” Sasha clipped. She turned to Jon, who tried fruitlessly to make himself invisible. “We’re going to have words about this.”

“He deserves to know, Sasha!” Jon protested, straightening a bit.

“Yes,” she answered crisply, “but you don’t deserve to die.”

Jon scowled, but something seemed to occur to her as she finished speaking. The harsh look on her face evaporated, and she gave him a sunny smile.

“Actually,” she mused, “I think I’ll just tell Tim.”

Jon’s eyes widened.

“After all,” Sasha sang, “I think he deserves to know…”

Jon scrambled after her, spewing incoherent protests, though he knew in the back of his mind it was a lost cause. He supposed there were worse things.

Behind him, invisible to the Watcher and all-too-visible to Jon, Michael was laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: supernatural eating disorder type thing alluded to at beginning of chapter, as well as a smidge of victim-blaming - you can skip to the bolded text if either of those things bother you; they're mostly just a recap of previous bad decisions Jon's made during this fic - then a very brief food cw because i CANNOT seem to get through a single chapter without someone having a meal
> 
> FINALLY i feel like we've gotten clearly romantic *enough* to honestly tag the polychives relationship. don't worry, we aren't by any means done developing it, there's gonna be _so much_ growth and maybe a smidge of angst idk, but! you can definitively see the romance beginning to form, now! go me
> 
> i'm also SO disappointed in myself tho, bc this is the second time i've promised spiral shenanigans and capped out on my word count before getting to the good stuff!! i love writing michael but it is NOT the same and i need to apologize for that
> 
> if it's any comfort, know that this fact guarantees _at least_ one more chapter getting written. we aren't getting out of here without ~~helen~~ 1+ more exciting encounters with the distortion. not unless i die. and that's a promise

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! as always, drop a kudos for your writer if you've made it this far, as i'm constantly desperate for validation. similarly, every single comment is appreciated! write me an essay analyzing the meaning of the chapter title, write me a single "<3," anything and everything gives me so much joy to read!!


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